


Rainbow River's Home

by PersoMena



Category: Original Work
Genre: Crossdressing, Dragons, Magic, Sexism, a public-school type setting when i never went to one, class superiority
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-11 06:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28466646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersoMena/pseuds/PersoMena
Summary: Three girls have earned the chance to study at a special college that has a unique quirk: certain lucky students can earn and raise dragons!  However, when they arrived they discovered that girls aren't permitted this opportunity.  This doesn't sit well with one of them...I have this story up on Wattpad as well, also for free, which is why I feel I can also post it here for more people to read.  This story's part of a series, but only the first book's been finished.
Kudos: 1





	1. Introduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The only remotely sci-fi part of this entire work.

Many centuries into the future, a spaceship named the _Phoenix_ embarked on a long journey. This wasn’t just any spaceship: it was a seeder vessel, with the purpose of sowing humans across the galaxy on new habitable planets. Using genetically-altered humanoids that they simply called ‘scouts,’ they explored new worlds, and as safe planets were discovered, a few humans and scouts were left behind.

One such discovered planet they named Aerese. It was a beautiful land, filled with unusual creatures. The colony who stayed had some issues at first, as they did their best to understand what creatures they were dealing with - especially as some of the creatures had the ability to summon lightning, start fires, or other strange things. As the next generation of humans and scouts grew up, though, they found they wouldn’t have as much trouble as they thought: the children had abilities to tap into the same magical currents that the creatures did. It wasn’t to a great extent, but it was enough to where the scientists of their colony started taking steps to make the transition from their old technology into using this magic to do the same things.

However, something strange started happening: some of the kids got unusual markings on their bodies and fell sick. Nobody could figure out what was going on. Of those kids, some of them recovered - gaining the ability to use actual magic, as opposed to just activating or ‘rezzing’ some of their newer technology - and some died.

And that was when they realized they had an even bigger problem than they thought. Those individuals who died came back to life as zombies. And if they killed someone, that person also became a zombie.

Nobody was sure exactly how to deal with this, until eight kids came forward with an absence of markings on themselves, extremely powerful magic, and bonds to very unique creatures that nobody had seen before. They did resemble other creatures that they’d seen around, but there were enough differences that they could only be called ‘dragons’ of four different elements, one pair of each. And any magic the kids cast on those zombies held.

When the kids were asked about it, all they could say was that a pal of theirs had found a glowing egg in his forge while another of the group of eight had found an egg in a well, four dragonlings had fallen out of each egg, and that the creatures had decided to bond to each of them.

The curse - referred to as the Shadow Storms - went on for about seven years. In the seventh year, the dragons and their bonded kids headed out to the center of the continent the humans had settled, instructing that a message be sent to every village where humans had settled, a message saying “Stay put.” A grand surge of magic from that point caused massive upheavals in the land, causing the continent to split into four: Springhold in the east, Summerfield in the south, Autumnvale in the west, and Winterlynn in the north. Everyone remembered a glowing dragon soaring into the air and exploding upon that happening, though nobody could confirm what had happened exactly.

When the earthquakes settled, each continent had two dragons approach the humans, with elves and dwarves in their wake. The dragons told the humans that their troubles were over, and the elves and dwarves are their friends - and, in fact, had been quietly watching them ever since they arrived on the planet, trying to decide if it was safe to approach them. The dragons also said that in order to assure that such a catastrophe wouldn’t occur again, they’d set up a symbiotic relationship with the humans: the humans would supply food and lodging for the two dragons before them, and the dragons would supply bondmates for the humans, as the more of them there were the less likely something like this would happen again. Also, if it ever came about that they had more to worry about than their own survival, the eight dragons refused to go to war with each other; if the continents ever decided to fight, the dragons would stay out of it. The humans agreed, and the humans and dragons worked together to create nests, and fortresses around those nests. The fortresses were going to be called the capitals of each continent, but the dragons themselves wouldn’t hear of it; they considered themselves important, but not _that_ important. About a year or two later, the fortresses were converted into schools in order to bring potential dragonriders closer to the eye of the ultimate decision-maker.

After a few years, kingdoms grew on each continent, and the societies grew and spread. The scouts vanished for some unknown reason, with only occasional sightings; as near as anyone could figure, the dragons made them uncomfortable and they went to find a continent that didn’t have them. The elves and dwarves mixing in varied on exactly how fast or how well depending on what continent you looked at. Dragons became just as common on the streets as humans, and mingled in human culture borderline-seamlessly. The only country that was having difficulty with getting dragons accepted in society was Winterlynn.

Centuries passed.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the story actually starts.

Wacky sat back on the train and sighed. Her friends were sitting with her - her twin sister Annie next to her, and their best friend Mollie across from them. All of them favored their nicknames. Mollie’s real name was Mallory, and Annie and Wacky were actually Annaliese and Whitney.

Annie and Wacky, naturally, looked almost identical, with brown hair and green eyes. However, their outfits defined their differences. Annie wore jeans, a yellow shirt (with embroidery on the sleeves that she’d done herself), practically-dress shoes and a hair ribbon pulling her shoulder-length hair back. Wacky looked more like a boy in a slightly oversized men’s suit and her hair chopped very short, enough like a boy to where anyone who didn’t already know she was a girl would make the mistake. This was a deliberate act: they’d had several bad neighborhoods to pass through in order to reach the train station in the first place, and rather than risk negative attention Wacky had cut her hair and dug out one of Dad’s old suits to wear for the journey (and Annie had tailored it so that it at least wasn’t a tent). Annie and Mollie hadn’t felt the need to do so, because they were both confident in the fact that Wacky could be quite dangerous when defending her sister.

Then there was Mollie, who was only sixteen, making her the youngest of the little group; academically she was something of a child prodigy. She was a bit more dressed up than the rest of them were. It was her mother’s idea to get her a dress, feeling like she should look her best on arrival; first impressions are everything after all. Mollie didn’t argue this - she normally didn’t when it came to her mother’s decisions. As a result, Mollie was in a casual sleeveless dress; the bodice was a cream-colored lace while the skirt was a very light pink with a thin cream ribbon that was tied in a bow around her waist. Her mother even took the time to tame her typically wild, naturally curly, medium length, chestnut brown hair. The end result was nice; the curls were looser than they normally were, and the dark hair framed her young face a lot better than it normally does, which brought out her bright, icy blue eyes a lot more. It was just the process that took a while. They had nearly missed the train because her mother had spent more time on Mollie’s hair than she had intended.

“So,” Wacky flung herself backwards in the seat, tempted to sit sideways, “high school’s behind us, and we’re going to Dragon Academy! I wonder if the boys there are just as big jerks as back home?” Wacky’s opinion of boys had always been kind of low, partly because of a good friend of hers who’d had a close encounter with a jerk.

Annie smacked Wacky up the side of the head and then went back to her sewing. Mollie shook her head slightly, and judging by the small smile on the younger girl’s face, she was amused by the twins' banter.

They were always like that. Wacky had chosen that nickname, tried to live up to it and do the most outrageous stuff, often just because someone told her she couldn’t. Annie was way more likely to behave properly, sit quietly, and do what she’s told, though she could explode.

Honestly, that had only happened once. One year, probably about the middle of high school, a new teacher came in and almost immediately started giving Mollie a hard time. That got Annie’s wind up, and the very next day she and Wacky actually started working together to drive that teacher crazy. Mollie ended up so grateful to Annie for standing up for her that she chose to stay as close to the usually-quiet twin as if she was a younger sister.

"Knowing boys, they probably won't mature much just because they have left high school and are going to some big-shot dragon college,” Mollie replied in her ‘voice of knowledge.’ “Especially if they're anything like my brother."

Their destination’s official name was actually the Winterlynn University; Wacky’s calling it Dragon Academy was still pretty accurate, though.

Wacky looked out the train window and saw that they had entered Glacia, capital of the northern Winter Nation. The train hissed to a stop, and she caught up her bags and hopped off, her friends close behind. People were everywhere, all going somewhere with just as much strength of purpose as Wacky did. A couple of cabs and a bus were waiting outside the station; she decided she would rather walk. Fortunately their destination wasn’t far - not exactly a hop, skip, and jump, but she’d walked farther during grocery runs back home - and Wacky was wearing her walking shoes. Forty-seven minutes later, Wacky was catching her breath right in front of Winterlynn University with Mollie on her back. Yeah, Mollie wasn’t all that much smaller than Wacky herself, but the girl wasn’t too heavy for her. Annie brought up the rear with all three suitcases, and yet she didn’t look tired. Chasing Wacky was a great way for her to stay in shape.

The three girls looked up at the school. If it had ever looked like a military fortress, the donations from many rich patrons had taken the edge off. The white roof of the main school building and two white cones that were probably tower roofs were all that could be seen from outside the four-story walls.

The building was loosely shaped like a fortress, but what sort of stone it was built of was no longer clear: it had long since been covered in pale blue stucco and decorated with relief designs and white trellises. In other words, it looked like someone’s private castle.

A couple of hefty black stone water dragons crouched on pedestals at the foot of the front steps. Their faces were sort of like otter faces, though they had fin-like ears and long knife-like horns growing from their brow ridges; plus, one of them had a drooping moustache and beard constructed entirely of tentacle-like things. Their hands and feet were shaped remarkably like human hands and feet, though their toes were longer and both had webbing between their digits. The wings were partially spread, and if they were fully spread they were probably big enough to carry the dragon. They also had nearly-transparent crests fanned open, reaching from just behind their horns to a few inches in front of their wing-shoulders. Those crest-fins picked up again on their hips, and extended down the entire length of their tails, which had to be twice the length of the dragon’s body as they circled around their pedestals. There was a gap right near the tip of the tail, before a pretty wide fan on the tip, and Wacky wondered if that had been a mistake.

The tall door was open, so the three of them walked through - feeling an odd spike in anticipation in the process - only to stop in amazement. The building itself had two towers on each front corner, and there was no reason to doubt that there were matching towers in back. A stone pathway extended from their feet in beautiful river-like patterns towards the school through well-kept lawns, circling around a large fountain halfway there. From the fountain, paths branched - or flowed - to the left and right, ending at a well-kept garden and a pretty gazebo respectively.

Before they could really take in any further details regarding either of those places, they were greeted by a hall monitor. With a crisp green dress and white apron, grey hair bound up in a bun, and frown lines around her mouth, she looked like somebody’s cranky grandmother. “Ah! You must be the honor students. What might your names be?”

“Annaliese Katzeling,” Annie spoke first, apparently feeling the need to try to impress the monitor. Then she elbowed her twin in the side.

“Ow! Um, Whitney Katzeling.” Wacky didn’t like using her real name much.

“Mallory Brooks,” Mollie finished, the nerves in her voice making her introduction sound over-rehearsed.

Before they could say anything else, the monitor escorted them around the fountain toward the school.

“You must be very proud of yourselves. Believe me; it’s highly uncommon for even one youngster of your…background…to be admitted into this university…”

Wacky gritted her teeth behind the monitor’s back, and glancing around she could see Mollie felt the same. (Annie didn’t react. She never does.) Did even the _hall monitors_ around here come from such highborn families that they felt justified in looking down their noses at people from lower classes? Just because Wacky’s mom couldn’t afford to pay tuition at Winterlynn didn’t mean Wacky herself didn’t _belong_ here; not when her _grades_ earned her a place here.

“…But coming here opens up a great many opportunities for you to properly join the higher castes of society, Mister Katzeling.”

_**Mister** Katzeling? Right...right..._

“Surely a young lady of my position would be just as fortunate, right?” Wacky asked, trying to get a foothold in the conversation.

“Oh, hardly: the most _significant_ way for a _commoner_ to rise into the elite is by claiming a dragon, and the ladies don’t have that option.” She gestured at a gaggle of yellow-gowned girls near the front door of the school and added by way of explanation, “They’re too delicate, you see.”

“Really? I...see.” Wacky _did_ see. Girls, evidently, were encouraged to sit around sipping tea and gossiping while the boys mounted dragons and learned how to fly. Suddenly, she realized the humor of her position. The monitor’s mistake was excusable because she clearly was going by the clothes and hadn’t read the family transcripts or something. Wacky had considered changing into a more girly outfit upon arrival, but hadn’t yet decided. Now she suddenly realized that revealing herself as a girl would be tying her into a buttercup straitjacket with a bunch of idiots.

_I won’t correct her._

Then the large front door was opened, and all three girls had to stop and stare in amazement.

It began with just an intersection of hallways, one to the left and right and a short one straight ahead. But the sight that had stopped them in their tracks was the tower of light that was coming from the center of the large room at the end of the short hall.

The hall monitor smiled a tiny bit. “Never seen a magic-lift before, have you? There’s a staircase in there as well, for those who are in decent shape. I personally use the lift; I’m not in _that_ good shape.” Then she pointed down the left-hand hallway. “Go on, Mister Katzeling. The boys’ barracks are behind the door at the end of this hall. Choose your bed and put your things in its locker. And you must make your bed every morning - we do not tolerate slovenliness here.”

“Good to know,” Wacky answered, barely keeping her answer from being snide.

“As soon as you’ve gotten your things settled, come on back; you can explore later. We will wait for you, so that I can show all of you where everything is at once.”

Wacky followed the pale blue hallway to the door with a blue lily on it, opened it and walked in. Then she stopped and looked around at the room she was in.

The room was shaped rather like a semicircle, with a shining light surrounded by a spiral staircase in the left corner - a small magic-lift to get to higher floors, no doubt - and another door on the flat side, closer to the right wall. There were gold plush chairs and sofas scattered randomly about the floor, though none were obscuring any walkways. The vast ceiling was sky-blue, with relief designs that she couldn’t quite make out; the walls were striped in true blue and bright green, patterned with what looked like lilies or something; and the floor’s heavy plush carpet looked like a garden of roses in a field of dark blue.

 _Why did they give all those roses light blue petals with_ green _stripes and edges?_ It did match the rest of the room, but it made the floor look - to Wacky’s commoner’s eyes, at least - like a cabbage patch.

Heading through the door, she saw that the next room was where everybody slept. Heavy black bunk beds were in straight, perfect rows, with chests set into the foot of every bed. There was a wide path heading straight away from the door for a few paces, and then taking a sharp left. There were a couple of bunks along the flat side of the room within the L-shaped pathway.

Wacky claimed the first top bunk to the left of the hallway by flinging her bags up onto it. If she was going to be sleeping in a room full of teenage boys, she wanted a defensible position: she could kick a boy back down if they tried to prank her in the night. Also, people had a tendency not to look up, and she doubted the wellborn were any exception. She could get dressed up there if she had to, although she had no intention of counting on the other upper-bunk students conveniently looking the other way. She’d just have to get up before the other freshmen did.

Clambering up the ladder to her bed, Wacky studied the view before approaching her bags. There were a _lot_ of beds; she wondered how many of them were currently occupied. There couldn’t be enough wealthy young men to fill their barracks every year. Maybe some just stood empty; that would certainly guarantee that some of the students would get the bed they considered the best. Or maybe...the hall monitor only called this the “boy’s” barracks...maybe all four years’ worth stayed here.

Then she accomplished the task at hand by the simple technique of upending her bag into the locker. Closing the lid again, she crawled back to the ladder and slid down. Then she wove her way back through the furniture in the dorm’s common room and emerged into the hallway again.

Wacky barely made it back to the three before the hall monitor plucked at Wacky’s old jacket with a disdainful look on her face. “We’ll have to find you school uniforms, because these…these _garments_ of yours…they will not do.” She didn’t make any particular comment about the clothes the other two girls were wearing; presumably she’d already told them what was wrong with their current outfits.

Wacky stuck her tongue out at the monitor’s back.

“Come on, come on,” the monitor said impatiently, sweeping them off down the opposite hallway from the boys’ dorm. “There’s no sense in not showing you all this when it’s right here, but you’re getting uniforms immediately afterwards. This is a prestigious university and we will not have frumps walking these halls.”

 _Always on display, are we? Do I get a new haircut, too?_ Wacky managed to keep her mouth shut on that remark, though, not wanting her guide’s wrath aroused or to get smacked upside the head by Annie.

“What’s new besides you?” a boy in uniform asked as the monitor dragged them towards another door. They were heading down this new hall too fast for her to answer or to place why he looked so oddly feline, but she nodded back at him.

“Excuse me: how many other first-years are there?” Wacky asked as their cranky guide slowed to open the nearly-jeweled door.

“It’s a larger crop this year: there are one hundred and eighteen, including you.”

Wacky whistled. She couldn’t even imagine that many young adults in one place.

“And this is the Winter Queen’s nesting domain,” the monitor declared as she flung the door open.

While Wacky had guessed that the “Winter Queen” was the mother of all the dragonets given to qualifying students here, she hadn’t expected the nest-pond to be surrounded by a small forest, especially since the pond was indoors. Once she managed to grasp that, though, what plants the Winter Queen wanted around her bed were no surprise - from where she was standing, they all appeared to be silverleaf birches and shrubs with a groundcover of mint.

Mollie’s eyes grew wide in awe as a quiet, enchanted “Whoa,” became audible. Annie’s mouth dropped open, and Wacky - for once - was at a loss for words.

The monitor smiled a little at the three reactions and went on, “While this place is not strictly forbidden to either gender, the Winter Queen will personally drive out anyone who disturbs her peace.” Not giving them time to explore, she hustled them back out. “Now you all need uniforms.”

Down the hallway again, and then they turned right and headed towards the column of light. Wacky barely registered the presence of the boys’ restroom to her left and the girls’ to her right before suddenly the walls were gone and they were in the room with that glorious lift.

They stopped just long enough for Wacky to see the staircase--or rather, staircase _s_ : they were spiraling up in a double helix around the column of light. Then the monitor turned them to the right and started towards a new door, one pushed back a bit from the rest of that wall.

“What’s new besides you?”

Wacky jumped in startled déjà vu and twisted around to find herself staring at the same boy that she’d seen upon leaving the dorm, now leaning against the corner of the wall near the door they were heading for. This time she caught why he was so feline: his elegantly-shaped face was high-contrast, with dark brown hair and cream-colored skin setting off the greenest eyes she had ever seen. He was also smiling as he lounged against the wall, making him look even more like a cat with cream on its whiskers. Though...

Wacky waved cheekily at the boy as they went by, just before Annie elbowed her in the side yet again. Mollie just giggled quietly at the two.

“He was different from the last one,” Wacky said quietly. Annie just nodded in soft agreement. If anyone could identify twins, another set of twins could - it was like some kind of exclusive magic. 

Then the hall monitor opened the closet door, and Wacky wondered why she was so surprised. It wasn’t a closet after all: it was a dressing room, like what one would find in the bigger clothing stores. It seemed like the entire room was divided up with paper screens and curtains, with a single pathway between the two sets of changing areas. Against the back wall were two racks, one on either side of a beautiful tapestry depicting a rainbow-colored water dragon. On the racks to the left were neat rows of blue, while the racks to the right were filled with hangers of yellow.

The hall monitor grabbed a uniform off the left rack and shoved it at Wacky. “Put this on, quickly.”

Wacky shrugged and slipped into one of the changing areas. There she struggled out of her dad’s suit and slipped into the uniform. Before she stepped back out, she glanced at her reflection in the mirror that made the entire back wall of the changing area. The boys’ uniform was a dark blue suit, both slacks and jacket, with the school’s logo over the heart. Wacky often wondered about that logo: it was evenly balanced between pale yellow spikes in a solid half circle at the bottom of the crest, and a crescent of dark blue field as backdrop filling up the rest of the space inside the border, which was dark red on the boys’ uniform. What she couldn’t figure out was what it was supposed to be _of._ She supposed the pale spikes could represent the Borequan Mountains to the far north, but from where could one look at those mountains where they would look like that?

Dismissing the thought, Wacky went back to the hall monitor. Annie and Mollie were nowhere in sight, so they were probably trying on their own uniforms. “I think it’s a little loose,” she told her.

The hall monitor sniffed crossly - although Wacky was beginning to suspect “cross” was her natural state. “It is.” She grabbed Wacky’s shoulders and pushed her right through the tapestry.

The tapestry was hiding a doorway, and apparently this was where the fitting room was hiding. Several students in both uniforms were there, balancing on low pedestals while pins and needles strangely floated in midair to add or alter stitches to properly camouflage any oddities in body shape that the uniforms didn’t originally fit.

 _Invisible staff?_ Wacky guessed she shouldn’t be surprised. She’d read that there were some sentient beings who couldn’t actually be seen unless one had ‘the sight to see them,’ whatever that meant. Apparently she simply didn’t have that.

Most of the girls were getting their hems shortened or let out, although one girl was going to a farther corner wailing something about “not understanding it” and “following the diet for weeks.”

 _Ha, you ate yourself out of your previous corset size?_ Wacky thought, rather vindictively, and then she jumped as a floating pincushion bopped her wrist. Following it, she stepped up onto another pedestal right next to a blond boy.

“I didn’t really think they’d actually have a uniform in my size,” he said as Wacky steadied herself, his high voice startling her. “At least they actually had something close enough to size down properly. Magnus probably will need a whole new uniform specially-made for him, since I don’t think even the largest has enough extra fabric to size up enough. I wonder if it’ll be done in time. Hey, that’s a really ugly haircut - does your barber hate you, or something?”

Wacky turned her head to stare at him, shocked at his blatant rudeness. Then she was shocked by his doll-like appearance: he had curly blond hair, rosy cheeks and baby blue eyes. Coupled with his very low height - barely breaking four feet - he looked like a perfect little mannequin for the kids’ section of the mall! Either his parents had requested a midwife-mage to customize his appearance, or he’d drawn a very unfortunate set of genes. He could have been a child prodigy like Mollie, of course; but since Wacky was almost sure that the cheerful soprano was his _adult_ voice, that would still have made him at least fifteen.

“Sheesh, I cut my hair myself before I came here,” she snapped, a little sharper than she’d quite meant to; she was startled.

“…With what--hedge clippers? No, forget it; my name is Cookie,” he began.

“ _What?!_ ”

He let out a volley of high-pitched giggles as Wacky’s mouth dropped open in astonishment.

Wacky made a heroic effort at recovery. “Um…please tell me that’s a…”

“A nickname?” he interrupted, still making an impish face at her. “Yeah, my name’s actually Cody. My mom has always called me “Cookie” because she says I’m such a sweet thing.”

Wacky rolled her eyes, still of the opinion that his parents had named him - and possibly requested his exact appearance - without thinking at all about his adult life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just would like to mention: the invisible staff are technically not fairies, at least not the Earth definition of fairies. Thanking them won't cause them to cause mischief or leave, and iron doesn't bother them - not that there's much plain ol' iron around here. What are they really? I never go into it in this book, and I haven't figured out when I was actually going to say what they were. Which is good, because it gives me time to come up with something.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rest of the school tour.

After Wacky’s curtain fell back into place, the hall monitor caught Annie’s and Mollie’s shoulders and pushed the two girls into changing areas on the opposite side of the room. “Just wait there and hold still.”

Now separated by a thin curtain, Annie stood alone. She looked at the curtain. She could just make out Mollie’s silhouette on the other side. “You doing okay?”

Mollie’s silhouette turned its head to look in her direction, but suddenly twitched back with a small startled yelp instead of words.

“Mollie?” Then Annie jumped as a tape measure flew into her curtained-off area and started taking her measurements. _Yup, that’d cause a yelp._

Rather than actually panic, she decided to just accept this new arrangement and study the actions of her mysterious invisible helper.

The first thing to hit her was that there wasn’t any real “floating” business involved with that tape measure. The ‘zero’ end was suspended by itself, and the next point to be suspended kept changing depending on what the last measurement was, although whatever was holding that side seemed to favor jumping to about the three-foot mark.

The second thing to hit her was that she could just barely see something at each of those points: something that was just barely sparkling. _Fairies?_

After the tape measure satisfied its curiosity and flew out, a dress floated in on its hanger.

Rather than cause the fairy carrying it any extra stress, she took the hanger and studied the uniform that Winterlynn had delegated for the girls.

It was a yellow dress, with long sleeves and a bodice with a lace-up back and lacy-ruffled front. The A-line skirt probably only came to mid-calf, and it came with a white multi-layered slip.

Annie gently fussed with the sleeve. The fabric felt pretty light, so there wouldn’t be overheating even with the long sleeves and slip.

“Okay…” Quickly shedding her clothes, she got the slip on and had the dress fall over her head. She barely started straightening the skirt when suddenly the invisible staff started helping her with that, making sure her overskirt was falling correctly and then catching up the laces of the back and pulling them tight.

“Oof, watch it! I like breathing, thank you!”

Right after she spoke, the laces eased off a little and tied “themselves.”

“Thank you.” She considered the fit. “Let’s see...this feels good. Thank you again.” Stepping out, she waited for Wacky and Mollie.

The hall monitor sniffed. “Well, at least nobody had to make a brand-new uniform in the boys’ colors again.”

_Again?_

“When the weather turns colder, you will be supplied with a dress in a warmer fabric.”

“I understand.”

  
#  


Newly dressed in uniforms, and with Wacky’s hair trimmed to look nicer, the monitor led the three out of the wardrobe, past another door (which she declared was the auditorium) and to another door in a slightly curved wall, this one with a pink rose on it. “Alright, you two, get in there and choose beds for yourselves. This is the girls’ dorms,” she leveled a stern look at Wacky, “and I don’t want to catch _you_ going in there unchaperoned unless you get a sex change.”

Wacky snorted in amusement as the two girls went in. She had just effectively been banned from the dorm in which she should have been placed. _Perfect._

She chose to take the time as she waited for her friends, to study the magic lift more closely. She felt the hall monitor’s eyes on her as she wandered over. Then she bent down to see what was glowing.

The source of the light was an enormous gemstone, big enough for four people to stand on in a close circle and with a waist-high railing reaching around so that the only way onto the stone was from the direction of the front door. It sparkled, and it was really hard to say even at this range whether or not it even had a color, let alone what color that was.

When Wacky’s yellow-gowned friends came back minus their things, the hall monitor led them over and pointed to the remaining two doors opposite them. “That’s the study room,” the room immediately across from the girls’ dorm, “and that’s the dining hall,” the door to the left of the study hall. Then she towed them around to the lift ‘gate’. “Now let me explain how the lift works. If you have enough magic to activate a light switch, you can use this. You step onto the gemstone and think of the floor you wish to go to. It works both ways, up and down, and the color always changes depending on if someone’s coming up or down so that you don’t wind up with your feet on someone’s head...or someone else’s feet on _your_ head. It’s red if someone’s coming down, and blue if someone’s coming up, and where the light is shows where the person would be standing. There are five floors…”

Wacky studied the banister. _This would be so much fun to slide down…_

The hall monitor got a pained expression on her face. “...And if you absolutely _must_ act like a bunch of hooligans and slide down the banister, at least choose the side _towards_ the lift - it will catch something that’s falling, so you won’t break your necks.”

Annie hid a snicker behind her hand as Wacky rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Now, follow me. We’re going to the second floor.” She studied the stone for a moment - looking for any red spots, no doubt - and then stepped on, lightly closing her eyes. After a second, the light shone blue around her and she lifted gently off the stone.

When the light disappeared, Wacky jumped on and waited for the others to catch up. They stood in a circle. “On three?” she kidded.

Suddenly, they all started lifting upwards!

Wacky stared around her. “I didn’t think anything!” She glanced at Annie, who had closed her eyes.

“Apparently,” Mollie was somehow keeping a cool head about it as they went up through the very tall first floor, “only one person has to think anything about it unless somebody chose a different floor.”

“Correct,” the hall monitor got their attention as they drew even to the second floor.

If the first floor was designed to look like the inside of a palace, the second floor’s theme was apparently just going for elegant mansion, though there were still traces of the ‘palace’ theme.

The hall monitor tugged them briefly off the light source - again, only one way on or off - and started pointing. First she jabbed a finger to the right. “First door on the right is the Math classroom. The door at the end of this hall is where you’ll be studying Racial Interactions. And if you turn right when you reach that door, you’ll find a short hall leading to the first floor of the library, which is over the study hall.”

Annie and Mollie both looked excited at the thought of the library. Wacky just groaned. Yes, she’d gotten good enough grades to where she had earned her way here, but she didn’t like studying.

Then the monitor jabbed a finger to the left. “The first door to the left is the History classroom. The next one down is the principal’s office, do not disturb him. The door to the right leads to another hallway. At the end of it is a parlor. There are two doors in the left wall of that hallway before you reach the parlor. Both doors lead into the _ballroom._ ” She almost sounded excited about that fact, which was amazing considering how she’d been using a disagreeable voice the whole time up until then. Wacky had been starting to wonder if the woman even gave the time of day in that voice.

Then the hall monitor went back to her disagreeable tone. “Alright, back into the lift. We’re going to the third floor.”

Annie made a tiny whimper; Wacky guessed that her book-nuts twin wanted to explore the library and knew it was pointless to ask.

Getting to the third floor by lift was a bit twitchier than the trip to the second floor. For one thing, they were stepping into thin air. The monitor showed them a glowing gemstone in the guard rail right next to the empty space. “You touch this while thinking of the floor you want to go to, and then step out into the lift. You won’t fall, even if you’re going down; it’ll just be a gentle drift.”

So they followed the instructions, although just by the sheer arrangement of that mechanism they were forced to get on one at a time. And that was when they found out that a person’s wishes could control the speed of ascent: Wacky shot to the third floor in five seconds. “Whoo!”

“A- _hem!_ ” the monitor got their attention again. She led them away from the lift a few paces so that they could look around better.

The theme of that floor was apparently when they remembered that they had water dragons living here, because the walls were multiple shades of blue with vague bubble patterns.

The hall monitor pointed straight ahead, away from the lift, towards two doors. “Those two classrooms are empty, but don’t go getting any ideas about fooling around.” Then she pointed to the right. “That’s the Etiquette classroom.”

Wacky made a sound of aggravation in the back of her throat, which the monitor ignored as she towed all of them through the door to the left. Two doors were in front of them, which the monitor labeled as more parlors. One of the doors was open, and a boy was chatting with some girls inside. Wacky was at the wrong angle to see his face, but she had no doubt regarding his looks...or what he thought of them.

A sharp left turn took them into the hallway the parlor doors were actually on, and then they went through another door to another hallway. Two more doors were in immediate sight on the opposite wall. “The door on the right leads to a men’s restroom, while the door on the left leads to the infirmary.” Then another left turn had them going behind the lift and over to stand next to a door on their left that led back to the third floor’s lift entry point. She pointed to the two doors on the right. “The near door leads to a parlor - and that one has two doors, actually, it connects to the same hallway that the far door opens on. Immediately left after you go through the far door is the women’s restroom. As you turn your head towards the right, you’ll see the second floor of the library, and finally in the back of that area is another parlor.”

Annie and Mollie both made small eager sounds at the second mention of the library. Wacky’s only remark - under her breath - was “how many parlors does one building need?”

“And now there is no true need for you ladies to continue higher at this time. As long as you’re aware of the observation tower on the fifth floor, you don’t need to go higher. I must show Mister Katzeling one more floor, and then you must spend the rest of your time familiarizing yourselves with the layout. I can’t babysit you forever.” And with that, the monitor towed Wacky into the lift again and they went up one more floor.

The fourth floor was very simple, almost spartan, Wacky noticed as they stepped out onto the landing. A short hall ending in a window with a pretty seat below it was between two doors, and the monitor identified both of those doors as restrooms. Then she pointed to the left, “That’s the Dragonology classroom,” and the right, “and that’s the Magic classroom. Although honestly, I’m not sure if you or any of your friends have enough magic to qualify for that one. There’s one more library floor up here,” she jerked her thumb over her shoulder in the general direction of the Magic classroom, “through that door next to the stairs, to the left and at the end of that hall, but those books are either about dragon anatomy or magic technique, hardly reading a girl would require.” Then she turned around. “Now I must be about my other duties. You can explore the grounds on your own time; all you need to know right this instant is that Physical Education takes place outside in the area between the outer walls, the girls’ dorm and the Winter Queen’s domain.”

Wacky watched as the monitor went down the lift again. Then she headed down the stairs while going over the map in her own head, trying to make sure she got everything straight. Sure, she hated memorization, but getting good enough grades to earn a dragon required not getting lost in the campus.

  
~ ~ ~  


That evening, Wacky settled down in bed with the class schedule.

_Let’s see…I don’t have much choice as to what I take this semester…I have to take PE, Math, History, Geography, Foreign Languages, Etiquette - bleh - Racial Interactions and Dragonology._

Then she stopped cold. Dragonology had a note next to it: “Only available to male students.”

Wacky stared at that note for a long time. Then she started to grin. _This arrangement is_ definitely _to my liking!_


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where a not-so-happy surprise is sprung on the three.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A word of warning, this one runs on and potentially gets kind of repetitive. If you want, you can skip this chapter...however, important characters get named here.

Wacky was startled awake by the sound of a loud bell, and she quickly pulled the covers over her head and checked her watch as a loud thump sounded nearby - did some other boy hit his head on the underside of an overhead bunk?

_Five-thirty! For rich people, they sure get up early!_

She squirmed around and untucked the foot of her bed, reaching into the trunk for her clothes as the boys around her started moving. No way was she going to get caught here - she was going to get dressed hiding under her blankets! Wacky knew the result would be a little wrinkled, but the faster she got done, the fewer wrinkles there would be.

It took her five minutes to emerge fully dressed. And by the time she was done, of course, her bed definitely needed straightening.

Even so, she was still done a few minutes before most of the boys with a minimum of wrinkles, and quickly got her bed made up so neatly that no military type could find fault with it. _I think I’m going to wind up being neater here than I am at home, just so as to make sure I’m worthy of a dragon._ Then she waited by her bedpost for some sign of what was supposed to happen next.

“All right, you lazybones, listen up!” a man’s voice bellowed. “Your mothers might have made your beds while you were at home, but your mothers aren’t here, and you must keep your own bunks neat! Now, at attention! It’s inspection time!”

Wacky straightened up and waited as one of the largest men she’d ever seen came in and wandered about the room, inspecting every bunk that was in use and scolding any boy who didn’t do a good enough job.

Then he came to Wacky’s. After he gave her bunk the once-over, he turned to her. “Common-born, are you? Well, I see you know what you’re about for neatness! Keep it up!”

“Yes, sir!” _Yup, definitely going to try to keep showing up the boys with my performance in bed-making._

  
#  


Annie woke up to the sound of a faint bell, which she suspected was technically for the boys. She always had good hearing. With a yawn, she leaned around and looked down at Mollie on the golden wrought-metal bed below her. The darling was still asleep. Well...there was no reason to get out of bed this early…

Annie snuggled back down again and went back to sleep.

She didn’t know how much later it was that a louder bell rang in the room itself. Since she’d already gotten partially roused, it didn’t take long for her to shake the sleep from her eyes enough to look down at Mollie again. This time, the younger girl was awake. “Good morning, Mollie.”

“Morning...what time is it?”

“Um…” Annie climbed down and pulled her watch out of her shoe. “Seven.”

Mollie stretched her body across the bed with a gentle grunt before she pushed herself to a sitting position, rubbed her eyes and sat unblinking in her spot - as she does when she’s not fully awake yet, Annie knew from sleepovers with her friend.

Annie then helped her with her bed, her uniform and her hair. While she got her shoes on, Annie used the bedpost to help herself pull her own laces tight and tie them off securely, and then combed her hair.

“Now…” Annie climbed back up to her bed and got it made. “...Okay, there.” Then she slid back down and pulled the slightly-crumpled schedule from her bag. “Now...when’s breakfast?”

There it was: eight.

The two girls were quiet for a minute or two as the other girls got their uniforms on and their beds made. Then the hall monitor came in, wandering about the beds and declaring points on each bed. When she got to their beds, she looked at them with eyebrows raised. “Well, you two certainly know what you’re doing regarding neatness. Keep that up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And now, all of you ladies must go meet up with the other students in the auditorium.” And with those words, she left the room.

The girls went out to follow her.

The common room had the same theme as the girls’ dorm itself: pink-and-red roses on the carpet, pink-and-red roses on the walls, and plush violet furniture. Their very own magic-lift and staircase was to the left, the lift’s lights brightening up again as she watched.

As they left the girls’ dorm tower, Annie consulted the schedule. “One would think breakfast would be in the cafeteria, why’s it in the auditorium today?” Then she froze, really _looking_ at the paper.

“What’s up?” Mollie cocked her head.

The crowd was almost to the auditorium door before Annie explained what was on the paper that had horrified her. “The reason breakfast is in the auditorium today is...the new first-years are going to go up onto the stage one at a time during breakfast, introduce themselves and say a few words about their reasons for being here. _We have to give a speech!_ ”

“A spee-” Mollie broke the silence that hovered above their heads, even though she couldn’t exactly get the whole word out, as all the girls around them turned to stare at Annie. Annie could practically hear Mollie’s heart beating in her throat… or maybe that was the sound of her own heart pounding. “How… how is it that we are _just now_ learning about this?”

“It was on the schedule,” Annie already knew her voice was easily half an octave higher than it should have been as they went into the auditorium’s lobby, their classmates starting to talk about Annie’s announcement with tones ranging from confidence to worry. Objects were moving around in there by themselves as the invisible servants - that once again Annie thought she could sort of make out - set various things up, probably food tables. A beverage table was already set up, but there were a couple of boys standing near it and Annie wasn’t up to attempting conversation yet. “I was the only one of us who grabbed one, though, and I hadn’t really looked at it yet. I’m not sure Wacky knows about this, but... _he’ll_ be fine.” Annie hated public speaking. She hated having it sprung upon her even more. Mollie wasn’t all that different.

Wacky had an odd little talent, though. She could get up on a stage, deliver nearly a full five hundred words without actually saying a single thing, bow and walk back down...all without any real planning. And this time, she probably only had about five minutes tops to say anything about herself, and she also likely already knew _exactly_ what she was going to say.

Annie shook her head. “We’d better just get to Wacky.”

A lit taper, whose holder had probably been eavesdropping on the whole conversation, swiveled and pointed at the door in the back wall. Annie nodded at the taper as thanks and they headed towards it. Then she glanced at Mollie, who still looked pale. Her glance returned to the schedule in her hand. “Mollie...I hate to hit you with this when you’re already on edge about giving a speech to begin with, but...the girls are going up there first, and...both are in alphabetical order. By last name.”

Mollie didn’t speak right away, as it took a moment for her to register what Annie was saying. “I… see,” she managed to get out, though it came out as a slight murmur. It was clear she was suddenly dreading that her last name started with a B and thereby making her one of the first speakers, and it was equally clear that she’d be killing a million brain cells a minute between now until she got onto the stage trying to figure out what she was going to say to her peers.

Annie wasn’t going to be much better, honestly; her K last name meant she’d be down there a ways, but of the twins, she’d have been first even if they hadn’t mistaken Wacky for a boy. And Wacky was the one who knew what she was going to say.

When they walked in, the boys were already wandering around to find where they wanted to sit among the plush seats. There seemed to be more than there should have been, along with a handful of yellow dresses. Then again, this was probably every male student on the premises, not just the first-years. Annie wasn’t sure where those extra girls had come from. And...the remaining girls had the attention of each and every one of them upon coming in. Annie tried not to shrink, Mollie grabbed Annie’s arm, and the two of them entered the rows of seats. Oh, Annie knew why they had gotten all that attention: they were likely the first yellow-dressed students to come through the door in a while.

After a few minutes, the chatter started up again. There were still some speculative glances from several different guys, but otherwise their own conversations were more interesting.

And the variety among them! All the hair colors, heights and builds were rather overwhelming.

Finally Annie spotted their misclassified friend. They stopped at a seat in the corner, very close to the stage’s red curtains, where Wacky was sitting all alone. Apparently, for now at least, she was contagious and the rich boys didn’t want to be anywhere near her. And that suited Annie just fine.

“Hi, girls. Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough,” Annie eased Mollie’s fingers from her arm and fell into a chair two spaces away from her sister, more to claim it than to stay. “I just wanted to find you and drop Mollie off with you before getting some tea. Hey, Mollie, do you want anything?”

Mollie sank into the seat between the Katzelings, still looking rather pale and lost in her own head. “Water?” She even sounded distant.

“Yeah, okay.” Annie glanced at her sister’s hands. Wacky was sipping something steaming from her coffee mug that she’d managed to bring from home: a black mug with words that read “Coffee is my lifeblood” in white - except for the last word, which was red and looked like it was bleeding to death. Annie remembered when Wacky had gotten that thing. Annie had dragged her to a craft store around All Hallow’s Eve to get some costume supplies and that mug had caught her twin’s eye. “I’m a little surprised they let you get away with actually using that thing.”

Wacky laughed. Then she noticed Mollie. “Hey, Mollie, are you okay?” She somehow managed to sound worried even hard on the heels of a laugh. Well, she _was_ just as close to Mollie as Annie was.

Mollie’s eyes shot up quickly as she heard her name. “Ye-yeah. Sure,” she spoke, then let out a breath as she shrunk further into her seat. “As well as one could be after learning last minute that a speech is to be made at some point during our breakfast today.”

“Oh. That. I already know what I’m going to say.” Wacky probably hadn’t known that there would be a speech, but she wouldn’t have been all that rattled by it, hence the underreaction.

A laugh rang out a few rows away, causing Annie and Mollie to flinch a bit and look. Apparently, that handsome boy from yesterday was being entertaining to his own peers by being overly dramatic.

Annie trotted up the aisle again, got some room-temperature water and found some mint tea, and carried both dainty cups back through and down to her friends again. Her cup had a saucer, while Mollie’s didn’t. She chose her seat again and gave Mollie the water, took a careful sip from her cup, and stared in surprise. “I need to adjust how I sweeten my tea--they have more powerful sweetener!”

Wacky nodded. “Yeah, I got my coffee a little too sweet, too.”

“This is almost disgusting.” Annie grimaced and took another sip. “Now, Wacky, I think we should wait on getting our breakfast until after we’ve given our speeches.”

“Okay, okay.”

Around the time the girls finished settling into their seats, the school clock’s bell rang out, tolling eight.

_Here we go…_

The monitor walked up to the stage and a podium lifted up for her. Stepping behind it, she cleared her throat, smiled - that smile still looked odd, as it seemed she didn’t smile much - and addressed the room. “Welcome, students, to Winterlynn University! I am Ms. Frankshire. Now, when I call your name, you will each come up, introduce yourselves and say a little about what you want to accomplish while you’re here.” She fiddled with her papers again, fussed on a thin pair of glasses to study the paper more closely, and then announced, “Sariah Abernathy!”

A quiet groan reached Annie’s ears, and the voice was strangely familiar. _Was she the girl complaining about how she’d gained weight?_ A dark-haired girl stepped up. It _did_ look, in Annie’s brief glimpse of her back, like the laces were straining to keep the back of her dress shut. Stopping behind the podium, she tilted her chin like she was trying to say she owned the place. The roundness of her face spoiled the effect. “I’m Sariah, and I’m here looking to expand my horizons.”

_Now there’s an ambiguous statement if I ever heard one._

She left the stage to polite applause, and rushed up the aisle towards the lobby again. Going to see if the food was coming in, no doubt. The boys were slowly going gathering as well. Wacky stuck around, though Annie didn’t have a clue why...unless she was taking Annie’s vague advice about not giving speeches on a full stomach seriously.

“Kenzie Anasazi!”

This time it was a willow-thin girl with masses of golden curls that earned a mutter from Wacky. “You can probably see _those_ from Summerfield.”

She accomplished the “I own this place” chin-tilt much better. “I’m Kenzie, and I’m on the prowl for a husband!”

_Wow! No illusions about learning anything, does she?_

Wacky was snickering the whole time Kenzie was coming down with polite applause...and a couple of whistles from the boys. And someone among the boys caused a loud slap-sound, as if...did he face-palm?

“Patricia Archer!”

This girl’s hair was an almost ordinary brown. The remarkable side was the length - it got to her knees! “I’m Patricia, and I’m here to learn to be a musician.”

_At least she’s got a relatively sensible goal._

“Selene Argnam!”

Annie was amazed when this girl walked up to the stage. Her uniform looked like it had been made out of the boys’ blue fabric instead, and that was a very wise decision, as yellow would have washed out her platinum-blonde hair and her pale skin. “My name’s Selene, and I’m here to learn what I can about my parents’ trade so that I can take over when they decide to retire.”

_Okay...at least some girls are on the ambitious side._

“Emalina Ashby!”

_This is going to take a while._

  
#  


Not anywhere near enough names were called before...

“Mallory Brooks!”

Mollie’s head jerked up. She had been listening to the other girls before her, trying to get ideas for her own introduction, but she’d have been lying if she said they had had her undying attention. She probably might have zoned out as she tried to plan her own speech. She took a deep breath, and her eyes darted nervously towards Annie for some sort of mental comfort before slowly rising to her feet.

_Let’s just try to get this over with._

She walked towards the stage, attempting to focus on her breathing and clearing her mind of the negativities that were creeping up again. Finally, after what felt like the longest walk she’d ever taken, she made it to the podium. As she looked out at the masses of people in the room, she tried to remember what she had been thinking while back in her seat.

“Hello,” she spoke into the mic. “I’m M… Mollie,” she began, catching herself before she repeated her full name. This wasn’t going as smoothly as she’d hoped it would. “I'm sixteen and I’m here to…” _Why was I here?_ It’s what she’d been asking herself. Nothing good came to mind when she was brainstorming before, and as she stood up there with all the possibly judgmental eyes of her rich classmates who most likely felt like she shouldn’t be here to begin with staring up at her, it felt like the best of her ideas were left back in Row One with her friends. “Um, I’m here to…”

Mollie’s eyes roved over to where she’d been sitting at a moment ago. Annie was mouthing something at her. One word. _Possibilities._

“I’m here to open up more possibilities for my future!” Mollie rushed to the end of her sentence in relief. _Thank you, Annie!_ She ran back off the stage as fast as she could without tripping and breaking her neck, almost ignoring the applause that followed her announcement. She fell back into her chair and hid her face in her arms.

Annie rubbed her back as Ms. Frankshire requested that “Lavinia Burgess” come up to the stage. “You were great, Mollie. Really.”

Mollie moaned into her arms. “If I never have to do that again, it’ll still be too soon.”

“I agree, and I haven’t even gone up there yet.” Annie sighed and returned her attention to the stage.

  
#  


Wacky couldn’t believe half the names that came next. Did their parents hate them or something? She was amazed that Ms. Frankshire wasn’t tripping over any of the pronunciations!

Wacky was mostly tuning out what these girls were saying, only occasionally making remarks about some of the names to Mollie under her breath, trying to help the younger girl relax. Or, she did until Mollie went to actually get her breakfast.

It must have been ten minutes before finally a name she was actually interested in came up. “Annaliese Katzeling.”

Annie flinched. Then she stood slowly and headed onto the stage. Every step was so deliberate that it left Wacky wondering...had Annie made a plan _at all_ about what she was going to say, or was she walking that slow _because_ she was going over her plan?

Finally, she was standing behind the podium. Suddenly, Wacky was begging that her twin not get stage fright. Annie had a hard time communicating with complete strangers, and being the center of attention for all those strangers just made it worse.

She started with her eyes closed. “Hello, I’m Annie...and…” Then she opened her eyes and looked at the room full of people.

Annie froze, her eyes wide and darting about the room, and her mouth open just a tad.

Then Wacky realized something alarming: she couldn’t hear her sister’s breathing over the microphone. _Everybody’s_ breathing was picked up a little by the microphone, and she wasn’t hearing Annie’s at all. Annie might be a quiet breather, but she wasn’t _that_ good. And if she was holding her breath...um…

_Did anyone mention that my sister’s an easy fainter?_

Wacky had seen Annie faint in public before. It was a similar circumstance: up on a stage without a coherent plan, everybody looking at her, she made the mistake of looking back at them, stopped breathing, the lights went out. That had embarrassed her so much, it took almost the whole day to calm her down again when she regained consciousness. And if she hit the floor in front of all these rich people…

Wacky leaped out of her chair and ran up onto the stage as Annie’s eyes rolled back and fell shut, and managed to catch her amid a collective gasp before the poor girl hit the floor. As she was up there, she heard several male-voiced snickers. Wacky glared out at the crowds, trying to pin down the culprits.

“Pardon my sister,” she said into the microphone with her highest levels of dignity, “she’s unused to public speaking on an empty stomach.” With that, she heaved Annie into her arms, petticoats and all, prepared to carry her down the stairs again.

Annie regained consciousness first, though. “Wacky, wait,” she breathed into Wacky’s ear.

Wacky paused as Annie twisted around a little, caught the podium with one hand and the microphone - gently - with the other, and spoke softly into it. “Sorry...didn’t mean to do that. My reason to be here is to find what my contribution to the world is going to be.”

At that moment, Wacky envied her sister. Her twin had gotten so scared she’d fainted, and yet was still determined to say something.

She let go and Wacky carried her back off the stage. Applause rang out and Ms. Frankshire took the mike again. “Well, _that_ was certainly unexpected! I trust none of the rest of you plan on collapsing in the middle of your introduction?”

Wacky rolled her eyes as the rest of the room laughed.

Getting Annie back into her chair took some maneuvering, thanks to that full skirt. “Don’t worry, Annie, I’ll get both of us some breakfast.”

Annie waved her off, and she ran up to the lobby.

After filling two plates, she maneuvered back to Row One, where Mollie was taking her turn in being reassuring. Wacky wasn’t surprised; after all, Mollie had just been so scared she’d lost her train of thought - _Annie’d_ been so terrified she’d fainted!

“Naomi Kensington!”

The rest of the girls were introduced without anything being said that Wacky found particularly interesting. Then Ms. Frankshire got to the boys. And the first name she read was “Cody Akerlund!”

_I met someone named Cody yesterday…_

Sure enough, the rosy-cheeked little boy from yesterday went bouncing up the stairs and went behind the podium. Once he was behind it, however, he couldn’t really be seen. That podium only came to a normal teenager’s chest, and all that showed when _he_ was standing there was the top of his curly blond hair.

His high-pitched voice floated from behind the podium. “Um…can I get this thing a bit shorter?” Some laughs sounded from the guys around the auditorium as the little boy chattered in that vein and the podium was lowered to match his height. Then he looked around at the crowd, blinked his big baby-blues with a giant grin and all but chirped, “Hi, I’m Cookie!”

Every girl in the auditorium immediately chorused out “ _Aww!!!_ ” This kid had just won a fan club.

Annie’s jaw was clenched, but her eyes were sparkling as she tried her hardest not to react identically to the other girls. Wacky snickered into her hand. “What is with that attitude?” she whispered.

Mollie shrugged at Wacky's comment. "I’m surprised he _chooses_ to go by Cookie," she shared in a hushed, bewildered tone.

“Before I’m done here, I want the whole school to know I’ve been here!” Then he came bouncing back down the steps and the podium came back up to its original height.

“Benji Anasazi!”

The boy who came up had the same shade of blond in his hair as the girl with the curls that “could be seen from Summerfield.” “Hi...I’m Benji…” His smile turned ironic. “I’m sure you’ve all met my sister…”

Laughs sounded from the dudes. Wacky tuned out the rest of what he said. She also spaced over the next few boys.

“Tyrell Bakman!”

The boy who approached the podium this time was lanky, and had fairly short dark red hair that seemed kind of coarse in the way it caught the light. And when he arrived behind the podium, he was wearing a strangely sullen expression. He set his elbow on the podium and leaned his head against his hand. “Hey. I’m Tyrell. I’m here…” His eyes blinked shut. His breathing was still coming evenly over the microphone…

_Did he fall asleep?_

A few seconds later, his eyes snapped open again, his head jerked off his hand and he finished, “Yeah, I look forward to the school year.” Then he came down.

“Is it just me,” Annie whispered, “or did he never say what he was doing here?”

“Obviously,” Wacky whispered back, “he’s planning on sleeping through all his classes!”

“Reuben Baldwin!”

Wacky craned her neck around incredulously. “ _Baldwin?_ Who picked _his_ last name?!”

The next few names were like that. Ms. Frankshire would read the name, the boy would come up, speak his piece - which usually pertained to the desire to win a dragon - and come back down. If anything about a name stood out, Wacky would make a snide remark in an undertone.

“Etienne Currier!”

Wacky looked up and blinked. Etienne was a skinny blond guy in a _wheelchair!_ Wacky stared in amazement as he rolled over to the stairs.

Then he paused, considering the situation no doubt. “Um…” turning to the right, he rolled over to a ramp and headed up. “Okay, ah…” He stopped behind the podium, grabbed the sides of its top and hefted himself up into a standing position, staring out at the auditorium with blue eyes. “Hey.”

“His voice is strained,” Annie observed in a hushed whisper. “Is he not using his legs period, not even to stand?”

“He probably can keep his balance for a short time,” Mollie replied, as he said something about just trying his best, “but he didn’t think he needs to for the minute of being on stage when there’s literally something to lean on right there.”

He fell heavily back into his chair, causing him to roll backward a bit, and twirled about to head back down.

“The lights super-washed him out up there,” Wacky finally quipped, “or is that just what he usually looks like?”

Several more names were read. Then…

“Carmichael Farrington! ...Please leave your plate at your seat, Mister Farrington, you can finish it after you speak.”

The blue-suited boy who stepped onto the stage amid some laughter was borderline ball-shaped - body, head, and Wacky wouldn’t have been surprised if his hands and feet were round! His short brown hair was still spiky from when he got out of bed, and he looked all kinds of nervous.

“Um...hi...I’m Mike, and, um…” his voice dropped to almost nothing, “I want to learn to be a chef.”

Wacky could give her classmates credit, at least they were applauding as well as laughing as the chubby boy ran back down to his seat and his breakfast.

Annie blinked after him. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he had stress-related eating problems, with that speed.”

“Everett Ferguson!”

“And...there’s another weird last name,” Wacky snidely whispered.

Finally, they got to the K’s again. “Whitney Katzeling.”

Wacky winked at her friends with a flash of a grin and ran back up onto the stage. Something had gotten her attention when she was coming down with Annie: after her dignified remark, several people in the audience were making confused faces. And the face was something she’d seen on her own sister sometimes. That face could be translated with one sentence: “Where have I heard that voice before?”

 _Have they really watched my channel?_ Wacky had a Web-channel where she posted walkthrough videos under the very deliberately gender-neutral alias of WackyKat. In the beginning, she played a lot of games that weren’t horror, just to make sure she had her non-girly voice down under any circumstances; now, she mostly played horror games. However, she didn’t have a view-catcher, so her videos didn’t show her face like a lot of other walkthroughs on the Web did - which helped her maintain gender neutrality as well. _Well, if they_ have _watched my channel, then I’m going to blow their minds._

Straightening up behind the podium, she announced, “Hey hey hey, everyone, my name’s Wacky and welcome to Winterlynn University!”

She was met with some enlightened laughter and cheers from a bunch of first-years, and even from some of the older students.

“I know, I know, this is hardly the time for me to be promoting my WackyKat channel in the MagWeb,” Wacky added, rolling her eyes at Ms. Frankshire’s disapproving face. 

That got even more laughter, as of course she’d _just promoted it._

“Anyway, I have every intention of getting a dragon so I won’t be uploading very often this fall. When I get a dragon, I’ll have to see how that changes my uploading schedule. So thank you all for watching, punch the Like button, share with your friends and subscribe if you haven’t, and I will see _you,_ ” she waved a pointed finger around at the crowds, “...at the next meal. Bye!”

Then she went back to her seat, amid some grand applause. She’d won a fanclub just as fast as little Cookie had.

“Can I have your autograph?” she heard a boy’s voice shout.

“Sure, but it’ll cost you a silv,” she quipped back.

It was an even longer time before any names connected to an interesting figure, partly because a lot of the boys even started resembling each other. It was the uniform that did it. But then…

“Magnus Stillwell!”

_Hey...Cookie mentioned a Magnus…_

Then he came onto the stage. 

He was huge! Well, okay, he was just really tall, with broad shoulders and chest. His skin was very darkly tanned, his hair was a darker brown and cut relatively short, and his face...wasn’t necessarily something a girl would call attractive. And evidently the seamstress really had managed to throw together a school uniform in his size in time for this.

“Has he considered going out for basketball?” Wacky quipped.

His voice was deep, and he managed to project even though the microphone was too low for him to speak directly into it. “I’m Magnus, and I’m here to remain by my friend Cody.”

“ _He’s_ Cookie’s best friend?” Annie’s whisper sounded shocked. “He’s _Cookie’s_ best friend?”

“Powder-puff and guard dog,” Wacky snickered.

"They do say opposites attract," Mollie replied knowingly as Magnus came back down off the stage.

“Cornelius Sullivan!”

Wacky tuned out the next two people. Then…

“Damian Twilight!”

Wacky glanced up, and then stared, startled. _So_ that’s _his name! Or one of them, anyway!_ That dark brown hair, that cream-colored skin and those uber-green eyes - it was one of the “What’s new besides you” kidders!

“Hey,” his voice was filled with mischief. “I hope nobody tries too hard to keep track of my name…” That’s all he said, and then he came down off the stage.

“An odd remark…” Annie cocked her head.

“Lucian Twilight!”

“I think we’re about to get the explanation for that remark,” Wacky answered as the other brunet came onto the stage.

“Hey there,” his voice was just slightly different from his twin’s. “My brother and I intend to cause complete confusion!”

 _Bingo._ “I like them!” Wacky whispered.

The next two names didn’t actually bring great attention.

“Kyan Vanderlaan!”

Wacky blinked at the shadow that came onto the stage. Unlike most of the boys, his uniform was topped with some kind of hood, sunglasses peered out from under that hood, and he was wearing gloves. Everything about his appearance seemed to suggest he was hiding from the light! “What a spook,” Wacky quipped.

“Hello, my name’s Kyan.” His voice was soft, yet businesslike. "I have special dispensation from the principal to have these extra coverings with the uniform. My only goal is to achieve a diploma.”

Wacky could have sworn she knew that voice from somewhere...maybe from the Web. And if that was where she’d heard his voice, it could be anyone, so she shrugged and dismissed it.

Five more names were read - one of which was another Vanderlaan - and then Ms. Frankshire took the stage again. “Your official studies will be beginning tomorrow. Tonight, however, there will be a ball to welcome the new first-years properly to the school. I know that some of you will need a great deal of time to fully prepare, but I hope you will be able to enjoy yourselves!”

That brought some choruses of excitement from a lot of the first-year girls. Wacky just stared at Annie. “That... _was_ on the schedule, right?”

“Yeah…” She glanced at her sister. “And you will need to wear something quasi-formal to this, you realize that, right?”

Wacky groaned; she didn’t have _anything_ up to snuff, let alone _male_ clothing.

Annie looked at Mollie. “Do you think that dress you wore when you showed up yesterday will be nice enough?”

Mollie shrugged as she looked in Annie’s direction. "I'm not sure. But, I feel that dress may be too casual for a ball."

“Well, everybody knows we’re the ‘commoners,’ so they won’t be expecting us to be wearing anything of their caliber. I might be able to make that dress of yours look at least a _bit_ fancier for the sake of the ball.”

She probably could - Annie was an excellent seamstress. Still...that pink dress...Annie might be good, but she wasn’t a miracle-worker.

Mollie thought for a minute, then looked to Annie. "Well, if there are more casual dances later in the year, my 'arrival dress' could probably work for those. My mom insisted I pack a second dress a bit nicer than that one, maybe we can see what we can do with that one?" she suggested.

Annie looked at the schedule again. “Well, the ball is around six...breakfast just ended, and the students have been given the whole day to prepare…”

“Rich people,” Wacky scoffed.

“...And I knew we’d be getting uniforms, so most of what I packed wasn’t actual clothing, but _materials_ …” She glanced up with a gleam in her eye. “Let’s see what new clothes I can throw together for _all_ of us in eight hours!”


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The welcoming ball.

Six P.M. came.

Annie cast her eyes over both her friends’ new outfits with pride. Considering how she’d blasted through the creations of those duds, swapping which outfit she was working on every fifteen minutes so as not to get bogged down and not stopping for lunch - somebody had made her eat _some_ thing while she was working, but Annie didn’t even remember who’d fed her, let alone what it had been - 

_I feel I did fairly well._

The first outfit she’d made was Wacky’s. Since her sister was supposed to be mistaken for her brother, Annie had chosen a forest green to go with her sister’s eyes, and made a vest and some pants that could pass for slacks. The shirt under the vest was white, collared and long-sleeved, and everything had the buttons on the correct side for a boy. Thankfully, Wacky was still fairly flat-chested - Annie had started developing a figure in high school, but Wacky had yet to blossom - so she could carry the ‘boy’ look okay. Annie also made her a red tie to finish the look.

The second outfit was Mollie’s, partly because at the time Annie still needed to think of what she was going to do with hers, and partly because she was only updating a lavender floor-length dress that Mollie had already brought. It had been a simple dress, with an overskirt of sheer fabric, inch-wide shoulder straps and only a seam-defined waistline. Annie had removed the sheer from the skirt and turned some of it into a short-sleeved bodice to go over the original, removing the straps and pinning the two layers together with vine-and-flower embroidery. All that was left was adding a purple ribbon to the waistline to make sure it was more clearly defined. They also made sure to tame Mollie’s curls - at least, some of the invisible staff volunteered for the job. Annie still wasn’t sure about the lavender color with the dark brown hair, but she considered herself a bit of a weirdo when it came to color pairings at times.

Then there was Annie’s dress. It was floor-length, and she’d made it out of an emerald green with a type of fabric someone had gifted to her; Annie didn’t know what type it was, but it was slippery and smooth, and not standard material. She’d been saving it for a special project; she had amethyst-purple, too, but she’d opted to save that for a different outfit. The waistline was defined with more jewel-tones: a slippery ruby-red ribbon. At the neckline, Annie put metallic gold embroidery patterns that resembled scales. The zipper didn’t match the dress, unfortunately - it was white - but it was what she’d had on hand. To one who studied the dress more carefully, they’d see that the embroidered scales right in the center of the neckline had the letter A. Her hair was mostly hanging loose, except for some pulled back from her face with a strip of the sheer fabric left over from Mollie’s dress.

“Well,” Wacky ran her fingers through her own hair and tugged at her tie, trying to make it feel more normal to her probably, “let’s go knock them dead.”

Annie still had trouble taking in her twin’s new haircut. Back in their senior year, both of them had matching shoulder-length hair. However, Wacky had taken Annie’s scissors to her hair to turn herself into a boy for the journey through a slightly bad neighborhood to get to the train station heading to Winterlynn University. And that had been jarring enough as it was. The school had neatened what she’d done to herself, but Annie still felt shocked every time she looked at her.

The three went to the second floor and found the ballroom. Annie wondered, a little, what purpose that room served in the normal course of the year.

When they got there, she immediately had to squash a surge of inferiority about her work. Every girl there - and probably all the boys, as well - was wearing elegance that was probably crafted by master designers. _How can_ my _work hope to compete with a_ master’s?

Wacky wrinkled her nose. Annie suspected her sister was about to make yet another rude remark about rich people. Before she could say anything to cut her brash twin off, though, a group of nine people lined up on the stage where a band was waiting to perform. All of them were male, and they, honestly, looked like they were on their final year studying here.

The one standing in the middle took a single step forwards. He was tall, black-haired and handsome, and Annie was almost positive he was even a little older than the others. He kept his announcement short. “New students of Winterlynn...I bid you all welcome, and I hope you enjoy yourselves while you are here. Tonight, you may get to know each other, get to know those who have been here before you,” a smile hit his face, “and have fun.”

As everyone applauded, the music started and the final-years left the platform.

Annie, Wacky and Mollie headed for the refreshment table, carefully skirting the outer edges of the moving crowd. Whatever the young seamstress had eaten while she was working had worn thin, and presumably there would be enough food there to where all the students could get their complete supper.

That round boy Mike was there, gathering food. No plate: he was just wandering around the table, plucking up various tidbits with a fork and munching them directly from the serving dishes.

Wacky poked him in the shoulder. “Hey, chubby, you mind leaving something for the rest of us?”

Mike turned and stared at Wacky with very hard gray eyes. Annie was a little surprised smoke wasn’t coming out of his ears. “What. Did. You. Say?”

Annie jumped in. “Don’t mind my brother, he’s an idiot.”

“Hey!” Wacky protested.

“He just...um…” _How to better phrase what Wacky was actually saying?_ “Are...we interrupting you?”

“Hm?” He blinked at her. “Oh, um...no. Help yourselves. The sprites bring in new plates when something gets emptied.” He glared one more time at Wacky, and then went back to the food.

_Wacky...why do you have to constantly make enemies with a careless tongue?_

Annie did her best to make her selections modest, as she did still have an image to attempt to create and there was no way of knowing when or if they were going to be dragged off to dance. It was hard, though. Wacky and Mollie had an easier time gathering their suppers, as they’d had an opportunity to run off and get lunch. Still, half of the things on the table were so fancy-looking, it would be hard for Annie to spoil their beauty by eating them. And all the girls only recognized a fraction of what was there.

The only time Annie made a choice for Mollie was where a drink was concerned. After all, first-years were all around eighteen with Mollie as the exception, but that meant that some of the older students could be twenty-one, and that meant potential spiked drinks. Yeah, _probably_ the alcohol was in a special location and not even in the ballroom, but Annie wasn’t about to take any risks - the girls just had water.

There were tables lined up along one side of the room, apparently for the students who’d rather eat than dance. Annie found a table that had nobody sitting at it. Almost right next door was that sleepy boy Tyrell. He was wearing a very nice plum-color suit instead of his uniform, but he’d apparently chosen to sleep at a table, much to Annie’s amusement. _Well, that’s_ one _way to avoid being asked to dance._

She slid into a seat and tried to eat slowly, even though her stomach was screaming for her to _hurry up and feed it!_ After one bite, though, she had an easier time controlling herself; after all, one didn’t wolf food that tasted _this_ good!

Mollie all but fell into her chair next to Annie. Her plate hit the table much more gently. She stared pensively at her food before finally speaking. “I announced my age during my speech, didn’t I?”

“Um…” Annie swallowed her current mouthful. “Yeah, you did.”

Mollie let out a heavy sigh but said nothing else on the matter. She picked up her utensils and began to cut into her fish.

“Don’t feel too bad about it. At least you didn’t faint onstage and have to be rescued by Wacky.” That at least got a small smile out of Mollie as she lifted her fork to her mouth. Then Annie glanced at her sister. “You planning on dancing?”

Wacky shrugged. “I don’t know how to dance, and I doubt that there are many girls outside of you two who’d want to dance with me anyway.”

“Hi!” a perky - and familiar - voice cut across any further conversation. Annie turned and stared at Cookie, who was giving all his attention to Mollie. The emphasis on his next words proved that he’d overheard the two speakers. “Would _you_ care to dance?”

Mollie stared at Cookie as if she wasn’t sure if this was actually happening for a moment. “Um...” she began thoughtfully, glancing over at Annie before putting her fork down. “Sure.” She stood up slowly, probably so she wouldn’t get her dress caught up on the table or chair somehow. As Mollie stood next to Cookie, before he offered her his hand to guide her towards the dance floor, their height difference caught Annie’s eye; Mollie was exactly a head taller than Cookie.

“Wow,” Wacky remarked as the boy led Mollie into the crowds, “he looked _way_ taller onstage.”

Annie was hard put to keep from laughing. After a few seconds, she finally managed to get her breath back. “Wacky...you’re awful.”

Wacky shrugged, completely unrepentant, and stuffed a large forkful into her mouth.

Annie shoved her empty plate away and stood up. “Well...I’m going to go find an empty corner.”

Wacky waved an absent farewell as Annie wandered off.

Annie had two reasons for hunting down an empty corner. The first was that she wasn’t comfortable around large groups of people. The second was that she sincerely doubted that anybody would want to dance with her - well, except for Wacky but her twin didn’t know how to dance like a boy.

She pushed a curtain aside and found a balcony behind it, around the time the band picked up their next song. Stepping out, she stared upwards at the stars. _It’s so beautiful out here._

Time lost meaning for a while. She stared at the stars and listened to the music until she got bored of that and looked over the edge.

And she gasped at the sight.

She’d thought, when she turned, that she’d be staring into blackness stretching to the ground, or at most there would be vague glows outlining pathways. In reality, while there were glowing lights, the lights were reflecting like glistening rivers off of moving shapes below.

 _What...those are_ dragons! _Those are water dragons down there!_

She watched in fascination, trying to pick out the individual shapes as they moved. It was like they were dancing down there, to some music that she couldn’t hear over the music of the ballroom on her level. Some of them were fairly easy to see, either by having luminescent white bodies or wings, or having streaks and patterns of glowing gold; others could only be seen because of the light reflecting off their damp skins, and making out their true colors was impossible at this distance.

The swirling dragons moved along the ground, around the corner and out of sight, leaving only the glow of the path lights behind. Annie sighed and turned around again.

And she nearly had a heart attack right there.

A boy was sitting on the bench next to her, studying the night sky. He was in a blue-and-gold suit, with long white hair draping over his shoulder in a braid and bangs sweeping across his forehead, and he was positively beautiful.

Annie yelped, springing further away from him on the bench and staring at his profile. “How-how-how long were you there?”

He glanced at a sparkling watch on his left wrist. “About twenty minutes or so.” Even his tenor voice was beautiful.

 _Was I_ that _absorbed in the dancing dragons?_ She could feel her face growing hot as she struggled to remember if she’d seen him at all during the day.

His handsome face and incredible hair was ringing a very faint bell...like she saw him in the audience during the introduction, but he never took the stage. And that meant he had to be a second-year at the least.

Then he shifted in his seat, rested his left elbow on the back of the bench, and looked at her. His eyes were ice-blue and almost glowing.

Embarrassed at having been caught staring, she dropped her gaze. She just felt too shy to venture any other comment. The energy she could feel off of this guy...it was exhilarating and terrifying all at once. He was nothing like any guy she’d ever met, and he unnerved her greatly.

Then his right hand extended into her line of sight. If he had gloves with him, he wasn’t wearing them at the moment, and for a second Annie fixated on his excellent manicure. “My name’s Jack.”

The name caused her to snap her gaze back to his face in astonishment. That handsome face, that long beautiful hair, those clothes that spoke of great wealth, and his name was _Jack?_ It was so... _ordinary!_

Annie had no poker face, and evidently he had no trouble guessing what the astonishment was about; a smile just barely tugged at his lips. “Everyone says that. It’s a nickname, as my full name is too long to use in casual conversation.”

That helped...she supposed. Still a little odd that a rich boy wanted to go by _Jack,_ but oh well; each to their own.

After hesitating at least twice, she set her hand on his. Tingles shot through her, and she almost jerked away, but he gently closed his fingers around hers. “I’m...I’m Annie.”

“I know; I remember you from the introduction.”

Annie blushed again, remembering her collapse. Never mind that Wacky had kept her from hitting the floor, she still counted it as a ‘collapse’ because she _had_ lost consciousness. “I...I hate public speaking, especially when I don’t know it’s coming. I know it was on the schedule, but I hadn’t read it too carefully yesterday...” And now she was babbling, but she couldn’t manage to stop.

His other hand shifted and he rested a finger gently against her lips, silencing her. “Please forgive me, it wasn’t my intent to cause you discomfort from the memory of this morning.” Removing his hand again, he glanced out across the grounds.

Annie lifted her free hand and fidgeted with her hair. “ _I_ should be apologizing...I didn’t mean to start babbling like that.”

He released her hand and waved palm-up in a brief gesture like he was just casually dropping something. “This is your first day in a brand-new place which shall be your home for the equivalent of almost an entire year, surrounded by total strangers. I’m not surprised that you’re nervous - _I_ was nervous in my first year, and it was all I could do to convince my father and older brother that an entourage wasn’t necessary for living at a college.”

She couldn’t help but giggle. If she ever needed proof that he was a rich boy, that was it. _Entourage? Seriously?_

Then she tilted her head to the side. “Um...not to change the subject, but...what time is it?”

He glanced at that sparkling watch again. “Seven fifty, thereabouts.”

“Wow. ...I wonder how long I was just sitting out here. I really do prefer being alone when the other choice is being in a room with a ton of strangers.”

After a minute of silence, Jack spoke again. “Miss...ah, may I use your first name?”

Annie blinked. _Is he the type of guy who usually uses a girl’s last name? If he is...I guess he thinks mine is kinda strange. I don’t blame him, particularly…_ She nodded.

“Miss Annaliese, would you say you’ve...had enough of this party?”

Annie sat back and thought about it. _Let’s see...I’ve eaten, listened to an hour and a half’s worth of beautiful music while watching dragons party below the balcony, and had a conversation with a hot guy. Yeah, I’d say that I’ve had as much party as I really need._ “Yes.”

He sat forward a little bit, causing her to straighten up a bit. “There’s no rule saying that the first-years have to stay until the party’s end. If you’re done, you can return to your room now.”

 _Really?_ “May I?” She felt she was probably the only girl in this area - well, maybe aside from Mollie and Wacky - who would want to beg off a party.

“Your only issue is going to be getting to the door without being swept up by someone wanting to dance.” He was quiet for a moment. Then he stood up and once again offered her his hand. “Shall we dance to the exit?”

Annie stared at him for a second. Then she gave him her hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet. He was taller than she was, and she tried not to be nervous. However, close proximity to men who weren’t related to her wasn’t something she was even remotely used to, and she gasped when he put his other arm around her and set his hand on her waist.

“Set your hand on my shoulder, Miss Annaliese,” he said softly. “You needn’t fear; I’m a gentleman.”

Somehow, that line was strangely ironic to her. Still, if they were going to be heading for the exit under the pretense of a dance...she gingerly set her hand on his shoulder. Being this close to him left her very aware of him. He was no bodybuilder, but he was by no means a weakling. There were some toned muscles hidden under that suit.

They’d just about finished re-entry into the ballroom when she remembered. She whispered to him, “I don’t dance much.”

He whispered back, “Just hold tight and trust my movements.”

Annie still danced more than Wacky, but she technically had never learned _ballroom_ dancing. However, she wasn’t having too much trouble keeping up with what he was doing. He was using the hand on her waist to cue her in on which way she had to move. First he had pressed gently with the heel of his hand to get her to turn clockwise. After a couple of turns in that fashion, his fingertips gripped just barely at her side. Even as she followed the direction to rotate counterclockwise, she giggled quietly; she couldn’t help it.

He eased off almost immediately, with an extremely quiet “I beg your pardon.”

“It’s okay - I’m just kinda ticklish.” Make that _very_ ticklish, but she wasn’t going to give _that_ much ammo to someone she just met.

He made sure to have that signal be even gentler after that.

When they reached the door, Jack released her waist, but kept a hold of her hand. “Here you are. Thank you for deigning to dance with me.” Then he raised her hand and kissed the back of it before releasing her and vanishing into the crowds again.

Annie felt like she’d just been frozen. That hadn’t been an air-kiss! It also wasn’t a wet one, for which she was very thankful, but he’d truly kissed her hand! What was a rich boy doing, kissing the hand of a common girl? What was the world coming to?

As she burst out the door and tore off to the girls’ dorm to enjoy some peace and quiet before bed, she decided. _...I’m not mentioning this to Wacky. I’d never hear the end of it._


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Wacky discovers that one of her best friends is here at the school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: there's some mention of um...a monthly process that human women go through. Also, sorry, this is a longer chapter, but there was no good way of breaking it up.

The bell rang for morning.

Kyan tugged his sleeping mask away from his eyes and swiftly replaced it with his sunglasses. He was on a lower bunk as extra protection for his near-white skin against the light, but he still had to get dressed swiftly as it wasn’t that much protection.

While he made his bed, he thought about the students who’d introduced themselves yesterday. Well, one in particular.

Whitney Katzeling...WackyKat...

Kyan glanced over at her as she made her bed, remembering the Net call he’d had with her a year ago. He’d asked her at the time what she was, boy or girl, and she’d told him “not that it’s any of your business, but I’m a girl.” He’d made playthrough videos on the Net, with and without her, under the alias Fangmaster.

During that same Web call that he’d asked her gender, she’d asked “Turnabout’s fair play: are _you_ really a vampire, or are those fangs fake?” When he told her, she’d shrugged it off. Over time, they’d become extremely good friends...even though neither of them had met the other face-to-face.

He laughed softly to himself as he brushed his hair and watched Wacky dancing around up on her bed. They’d chatted through the Net just three days ago. Wacky had called him, wanting to apologize in advance for disappearing to college. “We won’t be able to make any more videos together until summer comes again...wow, that sounded so cheesy, I guess we really _are_ married.”

He’d laughed, of course; they’d made a video series of the game “Wilderness Survival” some time ago and he’d made some throwaway joke about them being married, she’d laughed and shouted “It’s canon now, we’re married!” and the fans had taken off.

He wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t recognized him when he took the stage: while he technically did have a viewcatcher, he tended to record with his room in total darkness, and using his fangs so that his voice was completely distorted. Plus, “Fangmaster” was far sillier in his actions than “Kyan” was. However...despite her not having a viewcatcher herself, he’d recognized her almost as soon as she took the stage to rescue her sister.

Some point before the year was up, he had to tell her about who he was.

  
~ ~ ~  


At breakfast, he glanced across the dining hall at the table that the honor students had claimed for themselves. Kyan had chosen his own table deliberately, so that a glance in that direction wouldn’t have him looking right into any light.

No one else was approaching them. There was enough room at that table to seat at least four more people, but none of the older students were deigning to lower themselves to the point where they’d sit with first-years, and his age-mates were clearly feeling class superiority. All everyone else was talking about was the dance last night. Kyan tuned his hearing entirely towards the... _shall I call it the “commoner’s” table, or the “honor student’s” table? I suppose “honor student” is more flattering._ He’d already decided he wasn’t going to approach their table just yet: it was a little too soon for him to make any overtures.

Wacky was easiest to hear. Whenever she spoke, it was pitched loud enough to where Kyan was sure that two tables away could hear her easily. “First day of official school...bleh.”

Annie just shrugged, as if it didn’t matter to her how much she had to study. Then she looked at her schedule. Kyan had to focus a tiny bit more to hear her, but not much more. “Let’s see...oh, you’ll like this, Wacky: first is PE.”

The grin that spread onto Wacky’s face just about lit up the whole table. “Sweet! I get to show those rich kids how to _really_ work!”

_And that’s her opinion of the entire school’s student population in a nutshell, WackyKat’s fans notwithstanding. I hope I don’t have too many bumps in her transition between me and Fangmaster._

Mollie nodded, but she didn’t seem to be truly paying attention to what Wacky had said. Her plate was apparently more interesting than the conversation. Annie turned and said more softly, “Wacky, if you aren’t careful in this class, you could either hurt yourself or accidentally reveal your little secret.”

“I know, I know, don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”

Ms. Frankshire announced to the dining hall in general, “Just to get this out of the way early, the school does permit the forming of various activity clubs that you can participate in during your free time, and there are no year barriers. However, for the sake of the first-years who are attempting to earn a dragon, you won’t be able to officially start a new club or join an existing one until after Midwinter. This is because those who earn dragons will be grouped together into a club of their own, their ‘wing,’ and that would disrupt any club that they had joined previously. However, unofficial club experimenting during the first semester will be allowed. Nine is the minimum number of members a club can have, to mirror how nine is the size a wing is permitted to be, but even a wing-club can have members from among the younger years if they should care to. Be respectful, be respectable, and keep up with your studies; otherwise, go wild.”

For the most part, the responses to that were just random affirmative choruses. Kyan suspected that the boys - and Wacky - were partially disregarding this new information as they couldn’t do anything about it until after Midwinter. The remaining girls, however, were no doubt going to look into the clubs going on during their free time today and find out which clubs were doing what, along with whether or not they were open to accepting new members.

Would Annie or Mollie look into those clubs? Probably not, he guessed, for they’d likely rather stay with their dragon-chasing friend.

  
#  


They all got to wear far more casual clothes for PE. Wacky hadn’t gotten her uniform on yet today, because it actually wasn’t where she’d left it the previous night: apparently they weren’t going to get their official school uniforms until after PE.

Wacky was actually kind of impressed with the place they took that class. The Physical Education area was outside - a courtyard with a large running track surrounding a sports field. A building the size of a barn housing workout machines was near the track, with the two locker rooms partially bracketing the track on either side. The large building also, presumably, held things that could be set up for variant in what was to be done in class. There wasn’t a swimming pool...exactly...but on the other side of a decent patch of grass from the track was a large lake that came right up to the school wall itself, even to the point of smacking into the tower that held the Winter Queen’s lair.

The same guy who inspected their bunks in the morning came out to meet them. “All right, listen up!” he snapped. “My name is Weston, and I’m responsible for you kids while you’re in this area!”

Wacky glanced around at all the other students while they warmed up and stretched, sizing them up.

Then…

“All right, boys, get out there on the track and line up!” he barked. “Not you, Etienne, I need to talk to you separate.”

Wacky - and all the other male students except for Etienne - filed out to the track.

“And you ladies,” he gave his attention to the girls, “you take the machines until I say you can switch with the boys.”

The girls all just nodded.

Wacky glanced around at the lineup. Many of the guys were giving looks at her, ranging from skepticism to speculation. _They don’t think I can handle this...or at least, they’re wondering what I’m capable of._

“Begin!”

They all started running: the final-years ran first; followed by the third-years, second-years, and lastly the first-years. Wacky took note of where everyone was even as she ran.

Magnus quickly outdistanced everyone with his long stride. Kyan was wearing so much she knew it wouldn’t be long before he overheated unless he paced himself carefully, and he knew it too, judging by how he was lagging. Tyrell and Mike were lagging as well, though Wacky guessed that that was because they weren’t used to working out, and little Cookie’s short legs put him back there with Sleepy and Chubby.

Everyone else was much more evenly balanced. Wacky decided to mess with them a little. She slacked off a bit…

Then one of the other guys turned around and ran backwards. “What’s the matter, kitty? Was this more than you could handle?”

Wacky’s eyes caught fire. Then she put on an extra burst of speed.

_The point’s not just to win: I want to see him cry._

She tore past the taunter, sending him spinning around again with how close she cut it, and ran right between the Twilight twins, chasing Magnus.

“ _ **Whoa!**_ ” both twins chorused their surprise, and started chasing Wacky.

  
~ ~ ~  


After about fifteen minutes of running, they traded places with the girls and took their own places inside on the workout machines. Again, a trend was shown.

Obviously, today Mr. Weston was just taking note of what each of them was capable of, so that he could give particular instructions to each of them in later classes. And again, Magnus demonstrated the most physical ability with his broad chest and shoulders, while Kyan, Tyrell, Mike and Cookie showed the least. And, again, Wacky started pushing herself. She was at about the middle of the pack. Finally, she had a way of judging where Etienne stood per se, and for being such a skinny guy he was only second to Magnus in upper body strength. Wacky was frustrated that there was no way for her to actually compete with the boys on the workout machines, and her stomach was starting to really bother her.

Sure enough, after the girls had been running (or running and walking, not all the girls were actually keeping up a steady pace) for fifteen minutes, Mr. Weston shouted, “All right, enough! All of you, start cooling down or you’ll stiffen up. The showers are in the locker rooms,” he pointed with his thumb to two doors, one on either side and each labeled with either a lily or a rose, “make sure you use them. Class is over early today, but don’t expect to get out this early every other day!”

A few groans came from the first-years, mostly from the girls. Wacky resolved to get her shower last, so as to avoid all the boys possibly seeing what she wasn’t.

  
#  


Kyan noticed that Wacky took the longest to come out of the locker room. _That’s hardly surprising, although it was odd that she seemed to be having stomach problems; she hadn’t had_ that _much for breakfast._

He spent the time between classes observing the threesome a bit more.

“I’m not going to give up,” Wacky was declaring, “until I’ve managed to tag Magnus on the track!”

“Wacky…” Annie set her hand on her face. “One of these days, you’re going to hurt yourself doing that.”

Mollie spoke up softly. “At least be smart as you show off, pick your battles carefully. We don’t need you passing out on the field because you needed to show up _every_ guy who challenges you.”

“Yeah, yeah…”

_So Wacky’s just always an overachiever in real life where being better than men is concerned._

“And trying to show up Magnus every day is going to kill you, you realize that, right?” Annie added.

“Okay, okay, I get it! I’ll only _try_ to catch Magnus every _other_ day.”

Next was the orientation for Etiquette class. Kyan already knew this material, so he didn’t foresee any problems. He did pay a bit closer attention to the honor students, though.

Annie and Mollie seemed a bit nervous, but otherwise there wasn’t any problem.

And Wacky...looked like she’d eaten something sour. Clearly, Etiquette was going to be a challenge for her.

  
~ ~ ~  


Kyan was laughing to himself all the way back to the dining hall for lunch. The biggest problem that Wacky had was that she apparently tended to speak her mind, whether it was flattering or not. Everything she said to another student in that class...the _words_ may have been polite, but her _tone_ was completely overlain with sarcasm. Professor Lavelle, an extremely dignified woman with small glasses and hair Kyan’s sunglasses tinted a dark yellow, had had to scold her for some of her behavior.

Kyan chose a closer table to them this time, listening carefully.

“Good. Freaking. _Grief!_ ” Wacky was declaring. “I can’t believe these stuffy rich people! What’s the point of all this etiquette stuff, anyway? I’ve survived this long without it, I _certainly_ don’t need it!”

“Wacky…” Annie sounded like she was close to a headache.

“Well, I don’t! No wonder rich people always act like they’re so high above everyone, if _that’s_ how they’re taught to act!”

“Whitney!” Annie snapped. “If you want a dragon, you’ll take this class, you’ll learn the material, and you’ll keep the information in your head long enough to pass tests. So you might only get a C in this class, _fine!_ As long as you _get_ that C!”

Wacky subsided, muttering to herself. Something about Annie being her twin, not her mother.

Mollie was paying very careful attention to her food. Kyan guessed she wasn’t very good at handling confrontations, even when said confrontation wasn’t directed at her.

“You _do_ realize that if you only get a C in this class, a dragon-worthy score will require you ace your other classes, right?”

“Not quite true,” Wacky spoke up again, sounding like she’d regained control. “As long as the scores are average A or B, a student can get a dragon. The only class that _requires_ a B-plus or better to get a dragon is, well, Dragonology.”

Kyan glanced up. Through his sunglasses’ tinted lenses, he saw Wacky’s face set into lines of determination.

“All right...then I _will_ get an A in Dragonology...and PE. And I _will_ get high grades in everything else...well,” her determined tone slipped, and she looked just a little sheepish, “maybe not necessarily Etiquette.”

Kyan laughed softly, although... _Why would she have come so close to losing it like that? She can keep things together far better than that!_

  
#  


Racial Interactions class had Wacky’s interest a bit stronger than Etiquette did.

Annie still clocked up better than Wacky in this type of class, but not by much. And Mollie… actually, Wacky didn’t know if there even was a subject that the prodigy didn’t excel at within the first month.

This class, evidently, was covering the languages - among other things - of the other humanoid races of this land: the elves and dwarves. This would be new territory in more ways than one, because elves and dwarves were only recently starting to interact with humans again since the Great War.

Their teacher was even a half-elf! Miss Amara Brinsley was downright beautiful, with bright blue eyes and her flowing blonde hair tucked behind slightly-pointed ears. Annie and Mollie liked her right away. Wacky was mostly fascinated by the fact that their teacher wasn’t a full human.

  
~ ~ ~  


Math was going to be frustrating. Wacky didn’t have much patience with numbers. Mollie had an easier time with word problems than the number setups. Annie...excelled at math...when she was allowed to go at her own pace. Wacky wondered how well her twin would do in a strict homework-oriented environment.

And glancing at her, she could tell Annie was wondering the same thing.

Professor Mertz, a woman who looked like a gentler version of the hall monitor, noticed the worried look on Annie’s face and called her up. “What’s the matter, dear?”

“Um...I’m more...used to a self-paced environment in math…”

She smiled gently. “Very well. I’ll give you your worksheets early and you can give them back to me whenever you complete them. You can take as much time as you need, I have no intention of failing anyone who’s genuinely trying.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Again, they were let out of class early, and Annie turned to Wacky. “Okay, I know you are probably going to need a bit of extra help with this…”

Wacky groaned.

“...so I’m offering my help to you. We’ll study math together.”

Wacky’s next reaction was to sigh with relief.

“I can help, when I can,” Mollie offered. “At least with explaining the concepts anyway.”

“Thanks, Moll,” Wacky ran her fingers through her hair. “I’m usually such a knucklehead when it comes to figuring out what those math books are talking about!”

Mollie smiled gently. “I’ll see if I can come up with some fun, easy ways to help you remember.”

  
#  


Kyan wandered around the school, taking note of where the honor students were.

Annie was in one of the parlors, sewing something on a small embroidery hoop. Mollie was sitting next to her, curled up with a book. It took some wandering to find Wacky. 

He finally found her, in the library of all places, dominating a loveseat and reading. Kyan walked over, wondering what book that was.

He reached the loveseat and bent over, peering over Wacky’s shoulder to see if he recognized the content of the pages. Wacky noticed and flipped the book closed, holding her place with her finger and showing Kyan the cover.

However, Kyan barely registered the title of the book - one of the textbooks - before his nose registered something about the person sitting in front of him.

Kyan had a far sharper nose than most people.

And Whitney ‘WackyKat’ Katzeling just barely smelled like blood.

In that moment, all the pieces came flying into place for him. The clutching of her stomach as she left the showers...the shortened temper...

Kyan straightened up again. “Hardly casual reading, isn’t it?”

“I’m not here to have fun, I’m here to study.”

As he didn’t have a ready comeback, Kyan wandered off to the infirmary.

_So. It’s that time of month for Wacky._

_I’d better make sure her cover isn’t blown prematurely._

  
#  


The orienting for Geography and History left Wacky feeling sour. Geography and History tied for the dubious honor of Worst Subject Ever for the highly-active twin. The only history that even remotely interested her was the Great War, and as for Geography...Wacky had failed Geography - if it wasn’t the neighborhood, it didn’t exist to her except in abstract concepts. Wacky spent the whole class trying to decide if she was going to be dozing off or turning antsy because she was hungry and kind of in pain.

And besides that, their teacher, Mr. Argnam, looked even less friendly than Mr. Weston. His hair was a similar shade to Selene’s, and he was sporting a scar on one side of his face, along with an eyepatch over that eye. Wacky wondered if he was any relation to Selene; father, perhaps? Or maybe an uncle?

Finally, they got to supper. Wacky tucked in like she hadn’t been swiping snacks during the free time, and Annie and Mollie both showed far more restraint in their speeds.

“Geography and history,” Wacky muttered around a mouthful, “why’d they have to put those two in the same timeslot? That’s going to be even more boring than each class by itself!”

“Or it’ll help you understand how the geography works in connection to the Great War, Wacky,” Annie countered, “did you think of that?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll still be paying attention. Trying to, anyway.” Then she corrected herself. “No, no ‘try’ - I’m going to _do_ this!”

“Ex-cellent mindset, VackyKat,” a mild - and familiar - voice suddenly addressed Wacky.

_Fangmaster?!_

All three girls jumped in their seats and spun to see Kyan approaching.

Wacky blinked dumbly up at him. _Is this...spook...really..._

“Mind if I join you ladies?” he asked as he returned his voice to normal. Then he took an extra seat between the twins, not waiting for an answer. Annie was looking at him out of the corner of her eye, like she wasn’t sure how to react to him and he was making her nervous.

“Sure,” Wacky replied, falling back on sarcasm, “make yourself comfortable.”

“Thank you, I have.” He was answering her sarcasm while deliberately ignoring it, Wacky was positive.

They ate in silence for a couple of minutes. Kyan being at the table just seemed to shut off conversation, because how could he possibly be...

Wacky went for an appearance of actively ignoring Kyan in favor of her food. Annie looked uneasy at his close proximity to her. Mollie watched him carefully from the corner of her eye as she ate, not wanting to make it even more awkward by silently staring at him, but curious to what he was up to.

Finally, Wacky couldn’t take the silence. “Um...are you really...Fangmaster?”

“Yes, I use the pseudonym of Fangmaster when on the Web.” After another minute of silence, his nose twitched and he looked at Wacky again and spoke low. “I brought something for you; if you don’t want your cover blown prematurely, I suggest you use it.” He slid his hand underneath hers, passing her something small that felt like cotton. And...Wacky could have sworn that behind those shades, he... _winked_ at her! Then he gathered up his plate again. “However, it seems that my presence has cut off conversation, so I’ll continue circulating. See you at Dragonology, Whitney.” Then the dark shadow wove off through the tables again.

Wacky blinked after him. _Should I tell him off for using my real name? Though it did sound okay when he said it…_ Then she looked into her hand.

He’d given her a small cotton ball with a string attached.

Her face flushed. _Oh. Is_ that _what had me feeling rotten all day? My monthly’s starting? Well, I’m not surprised that he could magically discover that fact._ Then the other implications hit her. _He just said he wasn’t going to enlighten the school to the fact that I’m a girl!_ Well, at least she had an ally among the rich boys now.

  
#  


_That went well. I’d better make sure I can supply her with as many of those as she will need before the end of her session._

When they gathered in the Dragonology classroom, Kyan noted that all four years worth of male students were in the room. Another notable thing to him was the sheer number of dragons in the room: twenty-two young dragons, with some variant in size and far more variety than that in color, each curled underneath different boys’ desks.

And then there was the shock of the classroom - there was a _girl_ here with a dragon! Her uniform, though yellow, was styled more like the boys’ uniforms with slacks and a coat. She looked to be a third-year, but how’d _she_ get a dragon? Girls weren’t put into the running here!

Then a handsome, slender, brown-haired man entered the room. “Welcome to Dragonology class; I’m Professor Sanford. Now, we’re not technically going to have an official class today, since it’s just orientation, but since every single dragon-raiser has brought their dragon today…” he gave an ironic smile to the laughing classroom and self-deprecating shrugs of the dragonriders being addressed, “I’d like to pick three dragons to come up front with their daddies, so that every first-year can get the chance to see the three types side by side. Ah, Adonis, Cyrus and...Rick, would you all come forward and bring your dragons?”

For all that the three young men approaching the front of the class were dressed identically and had similar body types, they were as different from each other as the dragons gripping their shoulders with handlike claws and wrapping tails around their waists. Kyan studied the future riders.

Adonis led the way, with his golden-haired head held high as if asking all around him to bask in his fair beauty (Kyan could have sworn he heard Wacky snort). Cyrus followed, with a confident stride and gentle hold on his dragon. To Kyan’s eyes, he was like a more muscled, darker-skinned and darker-haired version of Adonis, although all of those additions were very slight. Rick brought up the rear: slender and fair-skinned as an elf, hair that brushed his shoulders and was already a shocking bright red that spoke of early magic, and sparking flashes of a smile to either side of him as he walked with downright explosive amethyst eyes.

As they all arrived at the front of the classroom, Professor Sanford explained, “What you all see before you are dragons hatched last year, of freshwater, saltwater and brackish types. Our Winter Queen lays eggs of all three with no real rhyme or reason as to why. I asked for these in particular so that there would be no extra confusion regarding gender - boys, would you be so kind as to introduce your ladies, and add which type you have?”

Adonis lifted his chin and bounced his dragon in his arms as best he could, which nearly made him lose his grip on her. “Gentlemen, allow me to introduce - whoa - Anahita, the most elegant of all brackish dragons.”

As the little thing blinked almost sleepily, Professor Sanford elaborated. “Brackish dragons run about at the middle of the pack for sheer likelihood that our Queen will lay them.” Then he nodded, prompting the boys to continue.

Rick spoke next. “This is Zaina, a freshwater dragon.” He did not attempt to bounce her like Adonis had done.

“This is the most common of the eggs that our Winter Queen will lay, and if you earn a dragon, this is likely the one you’ll manage to get.”

Cyrus shifted his dragon in his arms, and the little thing turned and stared at the class, releasing Cyrus’s shoulder with one claw to do so. “This is Gwyneira...she’s a saltwater dragon.”

Gwyneira suddenly lifted her free claw, ‘palm’ towards the classroom, and waved! “Hello!” she chirped in a lisping, underwater-sounding voice that also sounded like it could have come from a five-year-old girl.

Some of the class started trying to restrain snickers. Then, from his seat in the first row, Cody waved back. “Hello!”

And that was it for any serious note in the classroom.

When the laughter died down, Professor Sanford spoke again. “Saltwater dragons are the rarest to appear, and Gwyn here is the reason I’d specified that females be brought forward: of all the eggs laid last year, the only saltwater dragon had been a female.

“Now then, Adonis, Cyrus, Rick, if you can convince your youngsters to stand on my desk…”

That took a little bit of doing. The dragons themselves were a little reluctant to let go of their ‘daddies,’ and their tails gripped very firmly. But eventually, they were all lined up: Gwyneira on the right side of the desk, Zaina on the left, and Anahita in the middle.

“It’s fortunate that a saltwater appeared at all last year, or else I’d have had to call up three dragons from a year further ago than you, and they wouldn’t have fit on the desk.” Some of the students laughed in reply as Rick and Cyrus each took a stand near corners of the desk next to their dragon’s heads and Adonis backed up to lounge against another student’s desk in Anahita’s line of sight. “First-years, come on up, a few at a time - I’d like for you to study these three. Don’t worry, they won’t bite. Normally, the only way to tell apart even a freshwater from saltwater is by touch; however, thanks to a baby dragon having such a thick layer of mucus, finding that texture is so difficult that I’ll just tell you. Freshwater dragons have smooth scales, brackish have pebbly scales, and saltwater dragons have scales with a texture like sandpaper.”

Kyan stood up, along with a handful of others. _I hope the mucus doesn’t aggravate any sensitivities,_ he thought as he tugged off one of his gloves.

Once he was closer, he studied the colors of the three. Zaina was predominantly white, with green streaky wings and fins, and some shade of pink marking her in interesting smoky patterns. Gently touching her neck, he found why Rick had declined bouncing her in his arms: the layer of mucus made her feel soft and slippery. It had probably been all the boy could do just to keep his grip on her bottom, a single bounce would have made his hands slip...like Adonis. Touching her neck made her look at him, and he saw that her all-pupil eyes were just starting to show some color in their iris, and that color was green.

Then there was Anahita in the middle. She was a blotchy green with borderline-transparent blue veined wings and fins, and red rose markings swirled on her body in more elaborate patterns than Zaina had, and her eyes were starting to show some blue.

And lastly, there was Gwyneira. That young dragon was mostly a pale blue, and that was the color that her eyes were becoming. However, she also had pearly white wings and fins, and pink marked its way down her sides and edged her fins.

“Now, I’m well aware that only a few of you are actually likely to receive dragons of our resident lady,” Professor Sanford added as the first-years all returned to their seats and the second-years collected their dragons again. “This doesn’t make your time here useless, however. Dragonology is always a useful topic to have on a resume. We’ll be mostly covering the water dragons in this class for the first semester. We’ll go on to talk about the remaining varieties once the second semester’s underway. By then, those of you who have earned dragons don’t _need_ to learn about the other species, but it is still a good idea. We do have a couple earth and air dragons on the premises, and they will be coming in for us to study. Fire dragons require very specific accommodations, and a water dragon’s habitat doesn’t match, so we don’t have any of them around normally, and when any come by it’s just a visit and they’re too busy to come in to class - that would be extra credit, if you know of someone with a miniature fire dragon you can ask to study.” Then he blinked. “Also...Jack? Would you mind taking Sonia around among the first-years?”

Kyan swiveled in his seat upon hearing a resigned tenor sigh, and saw a white-haired boy stand up, collecting his dragon from under his desk.

“While this isn’t likely to happen to your dragon, it’s still something that must be held in mind. Mother Nature isn’t always a kind midwife. Things can happen that nothing could have changed.”

Kyan wasn’t sure what Professor Sanford was trying so hard to say diplomatically...until Jack stopped at his desk with Sonia.

The little female dragon was gleaming white, with glistening white wings. Kyan was starting to wonder what the problem was with such a beautiful dragon. Then he looked at Sonia’s face.

She had a honey-yellow honeycombing across her face, including having hexagons printed around her eyes. And those eyes...Kyan had guessed that her eyes would either still look like they were all pupil or would be just showing an iris. They weren’t. They looked like they were made of faceted yellow crystals, with no sign of a pupil at all.

_She’s...blind!_

“Pray that your dragon is whole and in full command of its senses,” Sanford added as Jack returned to his chair, “but beyond that...everything is still left up to chance. Oh, and one last thing that you all need to keep in mind: Winterlynn water dragons aren’t dumb beasts. They can be just as intelligent as a human, as long as they’re taught well in their first years.”

Kyan wasn’t too surprised. A lot of nonfiction books he’d read had portrayed the dragons as being capable of holding conversations, so where had the authors found dragons that could talk? Glancing about the classroom informed him that most of his classmates seemed to have brushed that last statement off...except for a handful. And Wacky was among the handful. She looked surprised, but quickly became speculative about it.

  
~ ~ ~  


After the orientation, Wacky approached Kyan. “Um...thanks for...the...thing.” She was blushing by the end of her gratitude.

“You’re welcome. And...if you don’t mind my being forward about this...I can move my chosen bed to be below yours.” He already knew that she’d chosen a completely empty bunk when she’d come, and nobody had chosen the lower bed since.

“Hey, sure. Oh, and...um, do you mind sticking around to make sure I...never get caught? I mean, don’t take that the wrong way, I’m not wanting you around _just_ because you can catch a monthly...”

Kyan paid careful attention to Wacky’s voice. She didn’t sound like she was trying to be condescending; rather that she wanted him to be her friend, but had no idea how to actually _ask_ for that. No surprise: almost everyone who was “WackyKat’s” friend had approached _her,_ rarely the other way around. “Wacky...do you remember when Fangmaster contacted you during our second year in high school?”

She seemed a little surprised by that turn of the conversation, but she nodded. “You messaged me after I’d played ‘Night in the Warehouse’ for my channel, and you said you wanted to play the sequel with me.”

“And?”

“And...that you didn’t have any friends, so you hoped I’d be one.”

He smiled. “And what did _you_ say in reply?”

“I said…” a slow smile spread onto her face. “I said that there was no reason cats and bats couldn’t be friends.”

“As far as I’m concerned, _that_ was when our friendship started.”

Wacky grinned. “Well...if you insist…” Then, in a sudden swing, she turned. “Did you grab any more of those little things? I’d better swap this one out before bed.”

He passed another one to her, and watched as she ran off. “...Goodnight, Whitney.” _I do like her real name. And she’s...interesting._ A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. _She’s_ very _interesting._


End file.
